Inside Mining October 2013

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HOT

AFRIC AN UPDATES ON THE

ining GROUND AND UNDERGROUND

SEAT SEA

Senior environmental consultant: Zambia

Nyundo Armitage on Golder’s project integration in Africa

P8

CONCARGO GLOBAL LOGISTICS Top-tier transporter in Africa

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CONTENTS

A F R I C A N U P D AT E S O N T H E

ining

October 2013

GROUND AND UNDERGROUND

EDITOR’S COMMENT

ENDORSED BY

3 ON THE COVER O

Alluvial miners shine bright like diamonds

FROM THE FOSSIL FUEL FOUNDATION

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C Concargo, the Southern A African representative of g global project forwarding cconsortium The Heavy L Lift Group, has positioned iitself to handle all types o of project cargo anywhere iin Africa.

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Comment from Rosemary Falcon

12

South African coals – distribution of trace elements

HOT SEAT

8

Golder redefines project integration in Africa

DIAMONDS

16

Rockwell Diamonds’ big comeback in the Middle Orange

22

Bourevestnik X-ray hits the local market

24

Stellar Diamonds’ diamond drive in Sierra Leone

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Moulding the perfect mining model

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Lucara’s exceptional diamonds

ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

29

An urgent need to unravel migrant labour issues

30

Tenova Mining & Minerals South Africa’s new name and new impetus

24

34

MDM sails ahead without a partner

36

Fluor’s foolproof mining model

39

Infrastructure and processing, the perfect marriage

42

A cash competitive game changer

TRANSPORT & LOGISTICS

48

Transport Holdings makes a move on Mozambique

52

Grootvlei coal upgraded from road to rail

54

Reliable railways for Lennings

PANEL DISCUSSION – IT INNOVATIONS

30

56

Sable Data Works Marcia van Aswegen

58

MineRP Empie Strydom

60

Sage ERP Africa Keith Fenner

61

Micromine Craig Peek

PYROMETALLURGY

62

SNC-Lavalin’s widespread project portfolio

64

Cogeneration is the future

68

New ferroalloy technology from Tenova Pyromet

TECHNOLOGY

39

70

Paying less but getting more

72

Spillage smarts

74

Online coal analysers from Scantech

IN SID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013

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EDITOR’S COMMENT

Publisher Elizabeth Shorten Editor Laura Cornish Head of design Frédérick Danton Senior designer Hayley Mendelow Designer Kirsty Galloway Chief sub-editor Claire Nozaïc Sub-editor Patience Gumbo

A L LU V I A L M I N E R S

Shining bright like

diamonds

Marketing & events coordinator Neo Sithole Production manager Antois-Leigh Botma Production coordinator Jacqueline Modise Financial manager Andrew Lobban Administration Tonya Hebenton

Is there more to diamonds than their shiny, pleasing-to-the-eye appearance? Or do they look most beautiful when perched upon a necklace or ring?

Distribution manager Nomsa Masina Distribution coordinator Asha Pursotham Printers United Litho Johannesburg Tel: +27 (0)11 402 0571 ___________________________________ Advertising Sales

Stacey Glad Tel: +27 (0)11 465 5452 Cell: +27 (0)83 567 0073 stacey@connect.co.za ___________________________________

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T

HE AVERAGE FEMALE consumer would say yes, the average male would probably say no. And me? While I cannot deny that diamonds are stunning, rough or clean cut, my appreciation for what was once just a piece of carbon extends considerably deeper than their surface appearance.

Last month, I spent two days in the arid Northern Cape visiting Rockwell Diamonds’ alluvial operations along the Middle Orange River. It was wonderful stepping out of the Johannesburg rush and into a world far removed from mad city life. This, however, was not what made my trip such a great one.

Not only did I discover the wonderful gems this company is recovering, but the real gems that are making it happen – Rockwell’s employees. It didn’t take long for me to realise how devoted they are to their diamonds and doing what needs to be done to recover them successfully. I think this is because alluvial diamond mining could be considered one of the most rewarding mining sectors. It largely comprises juniors with limited cash, which can never be 100% certain about where the diamonds are or what their grades will be. They also need to find innovative solutions to problems. This makes determination, dedication and commitment essential prerequisites for any alluvial employee. And Rockwell Diamonds has those in abundance.

The mentality is not unique to Rockwell; On-site at Rockwell it is shared by many Diamond’s new junior alluvial miners Niewejaarskraal project

in South Africa as well as kimberlite developers working furiously to make things work in remote African regions – like Stellar Diamonds in Sierra Leone or Lucara Diamonds in Botswana. Difficulties and challenges simply cannot be deterrents for success. In fact, they should be drivers.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that the true beauty of a diamond lies in the hearts and souls of those who persevere and pledge allegiance to their mine, giving it their all to make it work. A diamond wouldn’t be the same if the work to recover it was easy. A diamond’s beauty can also be attributed to its formation. Ground condition, heat and pressure must all come together over billions of years to form a diamond. This is partly the reason why they are so rare and so special.

A bit of internet scrolling has, however, led me to discover a new type of diamond, referred to as ‘impact diamonds’ – labelled according to the formation process. Did you know that Russia is said to be sitting on a deposit containing trillions of diamonds, formed due to an asteroid collision in Siberia some 35 million years ago. Apparently, the asteroid hit the earth with such impact, causing substantial pressure in a graphite-rich area, providing the right conditions for diamonds to form.

The Popigai crater containing the diamonds is said to be huge – and from this point on the information varies. The most impressive number appears to be its width, which is over 100 km. Some say the gems are of poor quality, while other sources (the Siberian Times to be specific), recently stated that these diamonds are completely unique. They have a much higher abrasiveness, to the point where they show no scratches after polishing. True, not true? One thing is for sure, it is pretty hard to believe.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer diamonds that were developed in the ‘conventional’ way. It is undoubtedly part of their attraction and sheer beauty that make them truly magnificent.

INSID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013

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FROM THE COAL PIT

FROM ROM THE COAL OA L P PIT

By Rosemary Falcon

Director, Technical Affairs, FFF

Energy security is often in question, but does South Africa have the manpower to solve this problem? Is there in fact a shortage of engineers in the country?

ENGINEERING FRATERNITY

A severe shortage W

HILE SOUTH AFRICA may have an abundance of sun, wind and coal (refer to the current report on the Coal Resources and Reserves of South Africa) – meaning we should never doubt the security of supply of its energy resources – it does not take into account the shortage of the most valuable commodity to manifestly produce that energy, namely skilled manpower. A colleague, Chris Reay, recently asked the question and presented the debate.

The following is a summary of the issues at stake.

The key question is what is the shortfall? First, the definition of engineers requires that reference to the term ‘engineers’ be seen in the collective sense since all projects require a balance of all levels of these manpower resources with sufficient skills and experience. The difficulty of providing an expected numeric answer to this question is that the question needs to be framed differently to be meaningful.

The broad answer is a definite YES. We are short if we measure

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ourselves against international norms. For example, based upon the last statistics (2004) from ECSA using the generic identity ‘engineer’, it becomes painfully apparent that South Africa is many orders of magnitude lower in skilled manpower than countries such as China where the ratio of engineer to population is 1 in 130, or India (1 in 157), Brazil (1 in 227), Argentina (1 in 453) and Chile (1 in 681). South Africa languishes behind with 1 engineer per 3 144 people.

This extreme difference manifests itself across all disciplines. The above statistic is about nine years old now and various dynamics have affected this. South Africa also produces the lowest number of graduates per head of population than the countries illustrated, so it must be concluded that the ratios are still of this order.

In addition to this, the immigration of engineering resources is exceeded by the emigration as far as data goes. Analysis by discipline is ineffective because the

game changes constantly. One year ago, high-level mining engineers of all types were simply unavailable. Today, employers are either in a holding pattern or retrenching both high- and lower-skilled mining-related manpower resources, but this is due to a radical reduction in investment into the mining industry at capital project level.

Economic growth has reduced to a projected 2.5%, which illustrates the impact played by the biggest industry in South Africa. For the country to start meeting any of the goals of the NDP (National Development Plan), growth will have to be at least three times this. Any such growth must take place in the built environment including mining and energy-related industries, thus requiring the commensurate quanta of skilled and experienced engineering resources. We simply do not have them, and it will take a radical and dedicated plan of action to start to affect this meaningfully.

One noticeable feature of many young engineers is the focus they have on accelerated career growth rather than on experience development, resulting in short and probably ineffective periods with employers.

addition to which many of our new graduates are emigrating.

Employers collectively avoid training seeing it as a cost and not an investment. Every discipline needs to focus on developing more of its own feedstock and ensuring adequate training of them to an assessed competence. This is no more apparent than in the energy industry – from resource assessment through mining to energy production and environmental control. In many cases, these sectors in the value energy chain present new careers in developing areas of practice that require advanced training post graduation. This can be addressed via well-structured short courses, in-house training and mentoring to ensure that the available experience in the semi and retired age groups can be accessed to provide this essential input.

Thus the need to train and retain new manpower resources is of paramount importance, but it is equally important to ensure there is a will to persevere and gain the necessary experience in their fields of choice.

In passing, it is relevant to note that a recent Citibank report on unexploited commodities value in various countries placed South Africa at the top, with US$2.5 trillion (R24.94 trillion), twice that of the next country (Russia). And this includes the energy resources to maintain and sustain the development of those commodities. Pitifully, this huge asset is being allowed to slip away not only by vacillating policy, poor labour structures and political innuendo leading to the lack of confidence by investors in South Africa’s mining development, but also due to an impoverished skilled workforce inadequately trained and demotivated to take this forward.

This situation must be seen as national prerogative on a bombshell-type approach.

South Africa is many orders of magnitude lower in skilled manpower than countries such as China Engineering skills develop with time and experience. The demographics indicate that the centre of gravity of experienced and real value-adding engineering in all disciplines’ skills lies between 50 and 70 years of age. Across all disciplines in the age group 25 to 40, a serious shortage of skills exists largely as a result of poor training, mentoring and development of such skills, this from graduate level and through the important years of on-site learning, in

COVER STORY

CONCARGO GLOBAL LOGISTICS

Top-tier transporter Concargo, the Southern African representative of global project forwarding consortium The Heavy Lift Group, has positioned itself to handle all types of project cargo anywhere in Africa. This strength has strategically placed the company at the forefront of logistics as business on the continent continues to grow.

C

ONCARGO MD David Kruyer believes the key to the company’s success in Africa is its business model. Concargo makes use of its global network, proprietary information technology systems, relationships, strategic business partnerships and alliances with transportation service providers, clearing and forwarding, shipping companies and expertise in outsourced logistics services and collateral to deliver a competitive advantage to each of its clients’ global supply chains.

The company’s motto states: “We help our clients save large amounts of money, improve efficiencies and avoid costly errors in their logistics operations.”

The company’s current road freight network offers a direct link from all ports in Africa and South Africa to a vast number of African and central landlocked countries including Angola, Botswana, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It facilitates interregional transport and cross trade between countries in the rest of the continent through its extensive agents network.

The company’s biggest challenge is compensating for a lack of basic infrastructure and services in Africa, resulting in excessively high transport costs, on a globally comparative scale. In most cases, it costs more to deliver a load from the port of arrival to its neighbouring landlocked country than it does to ship the load from anywhere in the world to that port.

Lengthy delays at the borders, inefficient and unreliable service, third-world infrastructure, corruption, poor road conditions and roadblocks cause lengthy time delays when transporting cargo by road. In many countries, the transporter is expected to report to the police upon arrival, creating tedious bureaucracy and the possibility of bribes and extortion. Despite this, Concargo believes that border crossings have become much easier, in some cases drastically so.

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This is, however, not true of every border crossing on the continent. The crossing between Ethiopia and Sudan has not changed at all in the past 10 years. The same can be said of the crossing between the DRC and Angola.

A simplification of permissive documentary processes, the eradication of complicated bureaucratic processes, the harmonisation of standards and a reduction of border delays will go a long way in reducing transport costs. There also needs to be an ongoing drive to foster total regional economic integration in Africa.

The com mpany y’s s currrentt road d freig ght netw worrk offe ers a dire ectt link k fro om alll porrts in Afric ca and d Soutth Africa to o a vastt nu umber of Afrrican n an nd cen ntrral la andllocke ed counttrie es An imbalance in interregional trade between the different countries impacts negatively on transport costs due to the lack of manufacturing and production facilities.

Concargo says that travel in Africa is not dangerous if hot spots such as Darfur, Niger, Northern Uganda and the borders between South Sudan, Sudan and Somalia are avoided.

Certain areas of the Maghreb, the southern border of the Sahara, Mali and Niger, and the Western Sahara, have been problematic.

Travelling to Timbuktu and Niger’s largest city, Agadez, is completely out of bounds. The Tuareg rebellion makes it difficult to service this part of Africa.

An impressive case study In 2011/12, Concargo was awarded a contract to transport a massive load of project freight consisting of structural steel and bucket reclaimer from China, from the port of Saldanha to a mine in

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COVER STORY

in Africa Postmasburg near Sishen in the Northern Cape, 850 km away. Hauling an abnormal load is a massive task. Except for the challenge of successfully getting the heavy loads from point A to B, there is traffic to contend with as the movement of other vehicles can be severely constricted by slow-moving abnormal load-carrying trucks. Principal approval and permits have to be arranged, traffic authorities need to be informed and escort vehicles need to accompany the whole entourage.

The traffic department also has to provide escorts if the load is unusually large. The Sishen South logistics project was the biggest abnormal out-of-gauge, over-dimensional cargo transport job ever hauled by Concargo and its strategic business partners.

The exercise took 142 people to execute, including drivers, assistants, stevedores, riggers, escorts and a full project management team. The loads had to be transported over the 850 km, weighing

Concargo’s service offering Concargo is a multifarious, internationally associated, partasset-based, globally affiliated and integrated logistics company providing: • abnormal heavy haulage trucking • turnkey project management • FTL and LTL break-bulk consolidation • road haulage in RSA, SADC and Africa • mobile crane and rigging service • deployment and event logistics • warehousing and distribution/courier • clearing and forwarding facilitation • contract logistics fleet management • offshore specialist logistics services • inter-/multimodal container logistics • marine transit insurance (all levels), including delay in start-up • marine & aviation charter contracts.

840 tonnes and measuring 6 200 m³, requiring approximately 142 000 ℓ of diesel to get it to its final destination. The project entailed a road train of 58 enormous vehicles, of which 37 carried abnormal out-of-gauge cargo, and four ‘Super Loads’, five of them up to 9.45 m wide.

The entourage had to be accompanied by 18 escort vehicles, as well as 36 provincial traffic escorts from each of the two provinces they travelled through. The entire project took six weeks to complete due to the year-end embargo period.

In recognition of the socio-economic environment, and seeking continued sustainability, Shiyimamba Investments, a BEE company owned by Nathi Chonco, acquired shares in the Concargo Group effective 1 January 2013. This confirms Concargo’s commitment to transformation as envisaged in its constitution and by its various stakeholders.

CONCARGO’S MANAGEMENT TEAM

2

3

4

5

1 1 David Kruyer, MD 2 Nathi Chonco, director, strategic projects 3 Greg Tighe, director, global projects 4 Beverley Kruyer, director, administration 5 Dave Johnson, director, Gauteng

Cape Town Sharecall 0860 25 26 27 • Johannesburg & Durban Sharecall 0860 64 27 67

INSID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013

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HOT SEAT

KAMOA

Redefining project GOLDER ASSOCIATES is showcasing the full extent of its service capabilities in Africa, thanks to its ongoing work in the African Copperbelt, this time for TSX-listed Ivanhoe Mines’ Kamoa copper project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), writes Laura Cornish.

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HOT SEAT

integration in Africa T HE KAMOA COPPER project is ranked as Africa’s largest highgrade copper discovery and the world’s largest undeveloped highgrade copper discovery. The project is a true reflection of Golder’s commitment to delivering world-class consulting services and its capability to deliver a single project across many disciplines through cohesive integration, particularly in the mining sector’s last untapped continent – Africa.

Kamoa is located near Kolwezi in the DRC’s Katanga province. According to Ivanhoe Mines, the project boasts 739 Mt of indicated mineral resources, containing 43.5 billion pounds of copper at a grade of 2.67%. This is in addition to another 277 Mt of inferred mineral resources containing 9.8 billion pounds of copper at 1.96%. Given the project’s significant estimated resource tonnages, it has the potential to support a very large mine and processing plant.

Golder’s involvement in the project started in 2010 when the company was appointed to provide baseline groundwater, surface water and geochemical input to Kamoa’s environmental impact study (EIS) to local DRC standards, originally undertaken by Zambia’s African Mining Consultants. “In 2012, we were appointed to develop the EIS into an ESHIA (environmental, social and health impact assessment) to comply with the International Finance Corporation’s Performance Standards, in addition to the DRC Mining Code,” states Nyundo Armitage, Golder’s senior environmental consultant in Zambia.

“Ivanhoe then asked us for support on its feasibility studies. We evaluated options for the mine’s bulk water supply from both groundwater and surface water, for example.

We also studied the best locations for a tailings storage facility (TSF) and designed it, and did the geotechnical work to determine the best positions for surface infrastructure.

“For the EISHA, we are conducting the air quality, soil, land capability and ecological studies; doing radiation monitoring; identifying problematic health areas; as well as doing

OPPOSITE Golder has to engage and consult with 26 different villages throughout the project’s duration

Different tiers of consultation are managed, from national government in small groups to all relevant government structures and departments, health NGOs, donors, traditional leadership, as well as in-depth consultations with every village. Two Golder teams were deployed to consult with the 26 villages, each village comprising between 200 and 250 people, with a large majority Stakeholder engagement consisting of children below the age of 10.

The proposed mine is situated in an impovBoth Armitage and Pietersen agree that erished remote rural area where people sur- the process has been extremely successful vive on subsistence farming and little else. due to Ivanhoe Mines’ commitment, supAntoinette Pietersen, Golder’s senior stake- port and joint cooperation. They have assistholder engagement specialist, outlines how ed in establishing community development the company has and committees, commucontinues to work with nity liaison officers local people. and interpreters. The “There are 26 villagmine also established es and many hamlets a successful sustainwith almost 5 000 peoable development prople in and around the gramme called the Ecoconcession area. Belivelihoods Programme, fore our involvement, which is aimed at food the mine had already security and conserachieved a great deal vation. The result is a of positive interaction good relationship of with the communities trust, which continues and implemented deto strengthen, owing velopment projects and to robust stakeholder committees, which is and communication really commendable.” engagement process“We started with what es and programmes,” we call capacity buildPietersen notes.

Nyundo ing,” Pietersen explains.

She admits that one Armitage, Golder's senior “We helped people unof the greatest chalenvironmental consultant derstand modern minlenges is managing exin Zambia ing, using visual matepectations, in terms of rials and long, patient temporary and permadiscussions. People who know only old-style nent employment opportunities, for both mining with huge environmental conse- the skilled and unskilled. “We have already quences will of course be concerned,” she given indication of the mine plan identisays. “A question we were regularly asked fied and which villages will be relocated and at our meetings was: ‘in which river will you those that may possibly be relocated, in an dump your tailings?’ People were astonished unimposing and non-threatening manner.” to hear that a dedicated tailings dam will contain the tailings. The reality of mining in The tailings storage facility (TSF) Africa today is that companies need the good The TSF component of the Kamoa project is relations with their neighbouring communi- considered vital. Golder was appointed to reties to attain their social licence to operate. visit the scoping report previously completWe assist our clients to do the right things to ed by another engineering consultant. “We revisited the sites originally identified and attain and maintain those relations.” the socio- and macro-economic studies,” Armitage continues. In total, Golder’s project work spans 23 different specialist areas.

“Golder’s commitment is to stay close to its client all the way through the project’s life cycle. From initiation and implementation, through development all the way to post closure,” Armitage highlights.

“Golder’s commitment is to stay close to its client all the way through the project’s life cycle.”

INSID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013

9

HOT SEAT

recommended that additional sites be considered feasible. Going through the crucial process of obtaining additional information in relation to the TSF helped us identify environmental and technical/engineering constraints and benefits. We also worked closely with Antoinette’s team in actively involving communities in the site identification decision-making process, as well as all other specialist areas,” says Sifiso Dlamini, tailings design engineer.

The tailings dam will be a 220 Mt facility, designed to last the mine’s lifespan of 30 years. A preferred site has been identified, on a side sloping hill. The site is 5 km from the plant and 580 ha in size, including the return water facilities and additional related infrastructure. It will function initially as a

investigations, including the TSF, process plant, roads, pipelines, conveyors and construction villages.

“We have also worked closely with the client’s principal consultant, Hatch, in terms of locating the most cost-effective location for the plant and evaluating potential construction aggregates, specifically earthwork materials and aggregates for concrete and road pavement layers,” says Scott Gover, geotechnical engineer.

Gover says one of the most interesting aspects of the project is the variable soil types in the area, which include hydromorphic grasslands comprising deep Kalahari sand deposits and loose, fine-grained soils inherent to the footwall sandstones of the N’Guba geological formation. “Our colleagues

A well-established African presence Armitage is based in Zambia within Golder’s Africa Business Development Unit, which covers Mozambique, Ghana, Botswana, Zambia, the DRC, Guinea and wider Africa to an extent. Based in Lusaka, he is also the regional manager for the Copperbelt region.

“We have an established presence in the DRC. Having people on the ground who can attend to clients immediately, who understand legislation and can get feedback immediately on political issues, plays a huge role in securing projects in Africa. We see this as a competitive advantage and are seeing the results,” Armitage acknowledges.

containment dam and then will be self-raised once an acceptable rate of rise is achieved. A variety of storage and deposition technologies were also evaluated, including dry stacking, hydraulic deposition, paste thickening and even underground backfilling using tailings materials.

“It is essential that we adhere to international standards and particularly the DRC Mining Code in terms of the TSF’s lining component, which was originally about 50% of the estimated total TSF cost,” Dlamini explains. Golder’s extensive study and evaluation work has drastically reduced the estimated cost of the facility due to the input from its geotechnical and geochemical divisions, which have proposed an ‘engineering barrier’, in place of a ‘plastic’ lining system.

This is an extremely cost-effective method that still prevents infiltration.

“Our intention is to stay involved throughout the TSF’s life, which after construction will include surveillance and monitoring. With the client’s consent, we will continue to do this until closure and post closure of the facility.”

Geotechnical elements Golder’s geotechnical contract encompasses all surface infrastructure A large majority of the villages comprise children under 10 years of age

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from the US have additionally assisted us with a fault hazard evaluation.”

The vital importance of integration “Because we are involved in the Kamoa project across so many engineering and scientific disciplines, it is essential that we work as an integrated team and it is clear we are doing so successfully. We hold integration workshops to assist the team in working seamlessly and to avoid duplication of effort. What counts in our favour is our experience in doing this. What must be emphasised is our client’s continuous involvement and support. We have become an extension of the client’s team,” says Le Roux Loubser, integrated project manager for Golder.

Golder has developed an environmental and social management system, in conjunction with Ivanhoe Mines, allowing online interaction and live data sharing. “This is a leading initiative, designed specifically for this project, which helps us track and monitor stakeholder engagement in a systematic format for every single person. There are already an impressive 6 000 stakeholders on the database,” Armitage notes.

Loubser outlines the three key integration aspects: • Excellent project integration “We have achieved this through our ability to operate as ‘one Golder’ while making use of local and global resources to add value to the project. Our ability to communicate effectively with all stakeholders, both internal and external, is extremely strong.” And this is thanks to the diverse experience of every Golder team member. “We are guided by our company values and understand the true value of teamwork.”

• Ability to manage change and/or challenges Golder is flexible and can handle projects of substantial size and complexity over a long period of time. “We are recognised for our ability to manage change, challenges and risks effectively.”

• Using solid project management principles The Kamoa project is considered a large-complex project, emphasising the need for a solid principles base to ensure project success. “We use globally recognised project management guidelines, which enable us to manage challenges effectively during execution of the project.”

The Kamoa project is a leading project for Golder, which continues to drive the project forward through its integrated, ‘one Golder’ approach, despite its involvement across numerous disciplines. It will be recorded as one of the company’s most important projects.

Occupational Health and Safety Seminar 2013 Presented by: LexisNexis and ENS

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FROM THE FOSSIL FUEL FOUNDATION

SOUTH AFRICAN COALS

Distribution of trace

South Africa remains the fifth largest exporter of thermal coal globally, according to 2012 statistics, and is a significant steam coal exporter to the European Union (EU). This fact is significant as the EU has supported the environmental lobby that threatens the combined full-scale use of coal in Europe and other developed countries. By Kobus Bergh*

A

S A RESULT, there has been a steady decline in thermal coal exports to the EU over the past five years. This promotes the development of clean coal technologies in order to counter the ever-increasing number of environmental constraints threatening the export market. Research on this topic addresses the challenge of potentially hazardous trace elements in coal, in particular hazardous air pollutants (HAP), which upon release to the receiving environment through emissions or leachates could have a serious deleterious effect on the environment.

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There are recorded instances where the release of specific trace elements into the environment have proven to have profound effects on public health and the ecosystem.

Emissions of toxic trace elements such as mercury and arsenic specifically, emitted from coal-burning power plants in Europe and Asia, have been shown to cause severe health problems. In general, inorganic elements present in coals in concentrations of 100Â mg/kg or parts per million (ppm) and below are regarded as trace elements. The majority of trace elements can be classified as heavy metals on the periodic table,

which are usually defined as elements with metallic attributes. Coal has been found to contain most of the trace elements in periodic table and data have been generated for 66 elements in the periodic table (Swaine, 1994).

South African coals are known to have high ash or mineral content, which substantiates the concern of the high trace element content in our coals (see Table 1).

There is limited data available in this matter. South African coal companies that export to developed countries should be concerned in finding a solution to these issues. The legislative measures in most of the export countries (in Europe and Asia) are tight and will tighten even more so in the near future.

Since the majority of the trace elements are associated with the inorganic fractions or mineral matter, which constitute the heavier fractions in the coal combination, beneficiation could assist in reducing not only the mineral matter, but also the trace elements associated with the mineral matter.

An improved understanding of the partitioning of trace elements in conjunction

FROM THE FOSSIL FUEL FOUNDATION

elements

Concentration (ppm or mg/kg)

As

Cd

Pb

Hg

Se

V

Cl

F

U

Th

Witbank 4 Seam (Bergh et al., 2008)

5.5

0.3

15

0.29

0.8

39

599

297

2.6

8.9

Highveld 4 Seam(Wagner et al., 2004)

3.1

0.4

7

0.20

1.0

33

†

†

†

†

Witbank 2 Seam (Cairncross et al., 1990)

4.6

0.6

10

0.12

0.9

27

†

†

4.0

15

Waterberg Upper Ecca(Bergh et al., 2011)

11.4

0.2

76

0.37

1.3

96

839

302

4.7

9.3

Waterberg(Wagner et al., 2012)

9.3

0.17

23.4

0.9

1.19

55

†

†

3.07

7.5

Global Ave (Zhang et al., 2009)

5.0

0.6

25

0.12

3.0

25

380‡

88‡

1.2

3.1

† Trace T el elements lements t n not ott anal analysed, lysed, d ‡ Yudovich Y doviichh ett al., Yud al.l , 2008 2008

TABLE 1 Raw concentration (in mg/kg or ppm) of trace elements in parent coals or runof-mine equivalent in South African coals versus the global average

with the mineralogy and beneficiation and utilisation capabilities from specific deposits such as the Witbank coalfields No 4 seam and Waterberg Upper Ecca coalfield would assist in reducing the possible emissions that result from combustion.

Trace elements from coal are classified into three classes in order of volatility (Figure 1). Mercury, being highly volatile, is one of the elements of greatest concern. Mercury in particular is known to cause neural and cardiovascular disease. Arsenic, which is less volatile, is known to be carcinogenic and

cause major harm to blood vessels and the human nervous system.

The test work and analyses were conducted on the Witbank coalfield No 4 Seam and Waterberg Upper Ecca coals.

In the research undertaken, it is shown that in the case of Witbank No 4 seam and Waterberg Upper Ecca coal there exists a clear relationship between the trace elements and the organic (maceral) and inorganic (mineral) components in the Witbank No 4 seam coal and Waterberg Upper Ecca Coals. It is shown that the concentrations of most trace

FIGURE 1 Classification of trace elements according to their behaviour during combustion or gasification (picture originally from Couch, 1995)

elements in the final marketable coal product can be manipulated by beneficiation including the trace elements of major concern (As, Be, Cd, Cr, Co, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb, Sb, Se, and U).

Traditional dense medium, gravity separation and froth flotation processes could be used to reduce associated mineral and maceral content and thereby reduce specific trace element content. Graph 1 shows the percentage reduction of a range of trace elements that can be achieved through dense medium beneficiation of the Witbank No 4 Seam coals. In the case illustrated, the reduction of trace elements took place after washing at densities of between 1.30 to 1.80. However, it was also established that a high-quality thermal coal product produced at low densities, with low ash and high volatile content, may also concentrate some trace elements. This is because such trace elements concentrate in the fine mineral matter associated with the light macerals in those low density range. Such trace elements include Hg and As. 

IN SID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 13

FROM THE FOSSIL FUEL FOUNDATION

GRAPH 1 Reduction potential of various trace elements though beneficiation – Witbank coalfield No 4 Seam

These results indicate that far more awareness of the origin and distribution of harmful trace elements in coal should be made, along with an understanding of the benefits, to reduce these offered by coal

beneficiation. South Africa is fortunate in possessing coals that upon beneficiation have low values of the detrimental trace elements so there is no need for general alarm.

KOBUS BERGH IS A MEMBER OF THE FOSSIL FUEL FOUNDATION BERGH, postgraduate student at the University of the Witwatersrand, received his BEng (Metallurgical Engineering) degree at the University of Pretoria in 2005 and completed his Masters Degree at the University of the Witwatersrand in 2009. He started his career at Anglo American Thermal Coal as a graduate metallurgist and is currently employed as plant manager: Projects.

14 INS I DE MI NI NG 1 0 | 2 0 1 3

References: Bergh, J.P., (2009). Trace Element partitioning in the Witbank Coalfield 4 seam. Paper: Fossil Fuel Foundation Indaba, 11–12 March 2009, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Cairncross, B., Hart, R.J. and Willis, J.P. (1990). Geochemistry and sedimentology of coal seams from the Permian Witbank Coalfield, South Africa, a means of identification. International Journal of Coal Geology, Vol. 16. pp. 309-325.

Swaine, D.J., 1994. Trace elements in coal and their dispersal during combustion. Fuel Processing Technology Vol. 39, pp. 121–137.

Wagner N.J., Hlatshwayo B., (2005). The occurrence of potentially hazardous trace elements in five Highveld coals, South Africa. International Journal of Coal Geology Vol. 63 pp.228– 246.

Wagner N.J., Tlotleng T.E., (2012). Distribution of selected trace elements in density fractionated Waterberg coals from South Africa International Journal of Coal Geology Vol. 94 pp. 225–237 Ketris, M.P. Yudowic, Ya. E.(2008). New Estimations Of Coal Clarkes: World averages For Trace Element Contents In Coal. Coal Geology Research Progress.

Nova Science Publishers, Inc. pp. 36-48 Zhang, D. Ren, Y. Zhu, C.-L. Chou, R. Zeng and B. Zheng. (2004). Mineral matter and potentially hazardous trace elements in coals from Qianxi Fault Depression Area in south-western Guizhou, China, International Journal of Coal Geology Vol. 57, pp. 49–61.

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DIAMONDS

ALLUVIAL MINING IN THE MIDDLE ORANGE

Rockwell’s big It is a little over two years since alluvial diamond junior Rockwell Diamonds put CEO James Campbell at the helm. Having visited the company’s Middle Orange River operations, one thing is clear – the company has since made a dramatic turnaround, writes Laura Cornish.

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DIAMONDS

c C

AMPBELL, HIS OPERATIONAL team and the board members who stand alongside him, are breathing life into the company and its assets, which under previous management was struggling to keep its head above water.

To say the company has made a dramatic turnaround is an understatement. Noncore assets have been sold (Klipdam), new mines and process plants built (to the value of US$3.6 million [R37.01 million]), and fitfor-purpose technologies implemented to deliver best production targets. And the future for Rockwell Diamonds looks bright as its goal to achieve 500 000 m³/month is well within reach, considering it is more than halfway there (360 000 m³/month) from current production volumes.

“We have also celebrated our fifth consecutive quarter of improved dollar denominated revenue, thanks to the increased recovery of large, high-value diamonds,” says Campbell.

Flagship status reinstated Situated on the south bank of the Orange River, about 50 km south-west of Douglas, Rockwell Diamonds’ Saxendrift mine is proving it deserves the flagship title once again, having produced substantially more carats in the 2013 financial year (10 276 carats) than in 2012 (6 944 carats).

This can be attributed to a number of reasons, including Saxendrift Extension (formerly known as the Jasper project, acquired early this year) and the incorporation of state-of-the-art diamond technology. The newly established Saxendrift Hill Complex (SHC), commissioned in March 2013, should deliver further improvements going forwards. “We built the SHC plant for a number of reasons, the primary reason being to incorporate a technology that we believed would improve our recovery capability for larger Type IIA carats, while reducing operational costs when compared to DMS or rotary pans. This concept was also intended as a proof of concept for our large resource Wouterspan asset,” explains Campbell.

meback Situated on the Saxendrift property, production ramp-up at the new SHC plant is nearing operational nameplate capacity (100 000 m3 /month) and celebrates what could become a revolutionary change in the local diamond sector. Having successfully pilot-tested a Russian Bourevestnik X-ray bulk sorter for six months to October 2012, which yielded positive results and 1 596 carats from old tailings reprocessing, the company purchased an additional sorter, as well as two single particle sorters that now form an integral component of the SHC plant.

Although Rockwell Diamonds was not the first company in South Africa to use the bulk X-ray sorter, it has undoubtedly pioneered the Bourevesnik X-ray in South Africa, being

the first local company to incorporate the technology in both a concentration and recovery mode. Walter Bold, Rockwell Diamonds’ group engineer, says the first machine imported into the country was used to test tailings material at Lětseng.

“The bulk X-ray plant has a lower environmental footprint with lower water consumption and power requirements than traditional DMS or pan processing plants. It also picks up flat stones, which no other technology has successfully achieved,” says Wikus OPPOSITE Primary crushing circuit at the Niewejaarskraal plant BELOW James Campbell (left) and Wikus de Winnaar

“We have also celebrated our fifth consecutive quarter of improved dollar denominated revenue, thanks to the increased recovery of large, high-value diamonds.” James Campbell, CEO, Rockwell Diamonds

IN SID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 17

DIAMONDS

1

2

1 BEFORE 105 carat stone from Saxendrift 2 AFTER 105 carat Saxendrift stone forms one of pair of exceptional round brilliant cut diamonds 3 The first large stones recovered from Niewejaarskraal 4 A sample of the first rough diamonds recovered from the Bulk X-ray pilot project conducted at Saxendrift 5 A 116 carat rough diamond recovered from Saxendrift Extension gravels 6 A selection of +10 carat stones recovered from Saxendrift in August 2013

3

4

5

18 INSID E M INING 1 0 | 2 0 1 3

6

de Winnaar, Saxendrift mine manager. It also only requires one operator to run the four modules. The capital investment in the project was paid back with gross revenue generated from the sale of diamonds recovered during the first two months of production. “It is purely based on diamond detection through luminescence, is mechanically robust and is an extremely simple process,” adds Bold.

In order to fully evaluate the effectiveness of the bulk X-ray technology, gravels from the Saxendrift extension project were processed in parallel through both the bulk X-ray system as well as Saxendrift’s traditional pan plant (with Flow Sort X-ray machines) in July.

Results to date indicate that the X-ray plant is achieving grades at least 40% higher than the conventional plant, and its large stone recovery capability very high (two rough diamonds exceeding 30 carats were recovered in July). The SHC plant is further projected to have 30% lower unit processing costs than the conventional Saxendrift pan plant, providing further commercial benefits.

While the lifespans of Saxendrift and SHC are three and one-and-a-half years respectively, the key to operational life beyond that is Saxendrift Extension, which has at least five years of life. “This is excluding what we may discover from further exploration down the line,” De Winnaar adds.

“Saxendrift Extension is located 5 km uphill from the SHC plant, and this is becoming a challenge for our Komatsu and Volvo equipment fleet, which is considered old in mining terms. We have brought in a consulting engineer to look at the fleet and help us evaluate various options.

This includes doing an extensive midlife overhaul of the kit, to keep it running another five years,” Campbell explains.

“The other option is to convert our Dabmar infield screen (which removes all sand, banded iron formation stone and oversize material before going to the main Saxendrift pan plant) to a mobile unit that can be transported into the pit. This would enable us to leave two thirds of the material in the pit, which would alleviate the pressure on the fleet, enabling it to last the life of mine. Standardising the fleet would also help.”

Campbell says the company opted for a Dabmar screen because it can take moisture content of up to 15%. “The Dabmar is the only machine that can dry screen with damp gravels with an efficiency well over 90%.”

DIAMONDS

TOP Dabmar pre-screening plant ABOVE Mining at Saxendrift extension RIGHT Saxendrift Hill Complex plant where Bourevestnik X-ray sorters are located

De Winnaar adds: “Ultimately, the success at Saxendrift, or any alluvial diamond project for that matter, requires high volumes to be moved continuously.

This makes our fleet an integral part of our business and our production targets. The greater the volumes, the more certainty there is around the number of carats recovered.”

A new star is born Located only 8 km (as the crow flies) from Saxendrift, also situated on the south bank of the Middle Orange River, Niewejaarskraal has been rejuvenated, taken out of care and maintenance, repaired, upgraded and expanded. And it is already producing diamonds.

The existing DMS plant, originally built by former owner Trans Hex, was recommissioned and certain plant components incorporated from the sold Klipdam mine. A new DMS plant, a first of its kind in South Africa as well, was installed in September and is currently being tested.

Could Rockwell pioneer a new revolutionary DMS technology for diamonds?

It’s possible.

“It took about 150 truckloads to transport all the necessary components from Klipdam, including the Flow Sort X-ray machines, and a 220 strong workforce came with it. Our investments to grow Middle Orange production will have socio-economic benefits for this region that is impacted by high unemployment.

Rockwell Diamonds has undoubtedly pioneered the Bourevesnik X-ray in South Africa All but eight of the workforce from Klipdam accepted a transfer to Niewejaarskraal, enabling us not only to preserve jobs, including the opencast contracting staff complement, but also retaining key skills to quickly bring the new mine on stream.”

Production commissioning of the first phase of the new plant started during July 2013, within 10 weeks of the project being approved. The first diamonds recovered included two stones exceeding 20 carats.

High diamond values have compensated for slightly lower than anticipated grades for the initial gravels that have been processed during commissioning, due to a greater variability in the Rooikoppie particle size distribution. The plant efficiency was confirmed; however, plant tailings were reprocessed through the bulk X-ray system with no diamonds being recovered.

The plant has been constructed using elements of the existing DMS plant that had been on care and maintenance at Niewejaarskraal since 2007. The next phase of

commissioning entails processing a mix of Palaeo and Rooikoppie gravels, which commenced during the third week of August when the first blast was carried out to access the main Palaeo deposit that is expected to be the mainstay of operations at Niewejaarskraal. The company has standardised bottom cut-off size of 5 mm for the Middle Orange resources.

Campbell is confident of this project’s performance going forward. “We have contracted CML Operations to do all our mining for us, having previously worked with it to turn Klipdam around before we sold it.”

The combined grade between Rockwell’s mines is approximately 0.5 carats/100 m³.

This combines Saxendrift’s average 0.4 with Niewejaarskraal’s 0.6 carats/100 m³.

The newest production addition also has a healthy estimated lifespan of 10 years.

“Future growth plans include options to further increase the production capacity at Niewejaarskraal, where we would consider

The situation at Tirisano The Tirisano mine, situated just outside of Ventersdorp, has been Rockwell’s problem child since it acquired it in March 2010. After numerous attempts to resolve operational difficulties, the mine was placed on care and maintenance in December 2012.

During the 2013 fiscal year, Rockwell launched its royalty mining contractor strategy to leverage the value at Tirisano. Smaller areas within the mining right, which are unsuited to a high-volume operating model, are operated by smaller operators who can mine these sections economically. The royalty miners incur all operational costs for these activities while Rockwell maintains responsibility for diamond security and generates a 12.5% royalty on diamond sales.

At the end of this year, there will be five different contractors on-site, after which monthly volumes are expected to exceed 150 000 m³/month.

INSID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 19

™ 7KH XOWLPDWH LQ GLDPRQG UHFRYHU\ 2XU VRUWHUV UHFRYHU ´$// 7<3(6µ RI GLDPRQGV RYHU VRUWHUV LQ FRXQWULHV

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DIAMONDS

the BV technology. We are also evaluating the next steps at Wouterspan, both of which would have flow through benefits for employment in the region.”

An even brighter future Dr Kurt Petersen, a doctor of diamond metallurgy, has completed a preliminary economic assessment on Rockwell’s Wouterspan property, situated between Saxendrift and Niewejaarskraal.

The study indicated positive economics, sufficient to take the project to the detailed design stage.

Key assumptions of the study include a 1 200 tph or 354 000 m³/month plant comprising three processing streams, two Bourevestnik bulk X-ray systems to handle the course and mid-sized gravels and the third stream being a DMS to process fine material. This would make it by far the largest operation in the Rockwell stable.

“We have a preference for contract mining and will use this model for Wouterspan. Because it is large, we will look at developing it in a phased approach

using equipment we already have onsite, hopefully starting early next year,” Campbell indicates.

Rockwell Diamonds has made a big ‘comeback’ in the Middle Orange River region and is set to grow even bigger over the next few years. With the right management in

Screened material, which will be transported to SHC

place, it appears this company is capable of anything when it comes to successfully mining alluvial diamonds, especially with great technology driving the process.

IN SID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 21

DABMAR MA N UFA CTUR IN G

COMPANY (PTY) LTD

Please contact jm@dabmar.co.za or c +27 (0)82 449 5919

www. dabmar .co.za

PROFILE | DIAMONDS

E

BOUREVESTNIK X-RAY

Revolutionary

technology Impulelo Technologies describes itself as a leading edge diamond technologies company.

Thanks to its licence agreement to sell Russia-based Bourevestnik’s diamond X-ray sorters,, it is fulfilling g its objective, j , writes Laura Cornish.

STABLISHED IN 2003, and officially in 2004, Impulelo Technologies is not only celebrating its 10th year in business, but also the Bourevestnik sorting technology, which MD Pieter Wolmarans believes is currently revolutionising the local diamond sector.

“Thanks to Bourevestnik’s mature triedand-tested bulk X-ray sorters, operationally successful across Russia’s diamonds mines, it is possible for the first time to have online large diamond sorters in South Africa,” says Wolmarans. Having worked for De Beers as a development engineer specialising in the design of X-ray sorters, Wolmarans believes one of his greatest contributions to the group was the development of a high tonnage fines (1 to 2 mm) X-ray 1 tph sorting machine in the early 1990s.

“This was a brilliant piece of equipment considering the technology available at the time, particularly in kimberlite operations where the fines fraction material is usually the cause of bottlenecks in the final recovery plant. Alluvial operations by comparison did not normally process materials smaller than 3 mm.

“I recognised the limited available sorting technology for smaller mining operations at the time as a gap in the diamond market, convinced that smaller alluvial mining operations deserved an alternative technology other than what was available to them,” Wolmarans recalls. He left De Beers and established Impulelo to pursue this opportunity.

The conventional diamond recovery process is to preconcentrate diamond bearing gravels, either through washing/rotary pans or DMS. A DMS plant is much more effective than rotary pans, but it is more expensive from a capital and operating cost point. It also has a much larger footprint. “I was determined to find a wet sorting technology that was cost competitive, operationally effective and capable of handling high volumes of material,” Wolmarans affirms. And he did.

In 2010, Impulelo Technologies launched the Bourevestnik X-ray sorting technology to the local mining market, having secured the licence agreement to distribute the company’s full product range. The technology was benchmark tested at Letseng using its tailings materials and recovered a large

TOP Rockwell Diamonds has the largest Bourevesnik X-ray installation in South Africa LEFT Bourevesnik X-ray installed at Steyn Diamonds

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PROFILE | DIAMONDS

diamond within the first hour of operating. The sorter was then acquired by Trans Hex for its Middle Orange-based Baken alluvial mine, which subsequently bought a second unit and continues to use them to recover diamonds from its tailings and ROM material.

“Thanks to Rockwell Diamonds, now we are able to show the X-ray sorter’s true capabilities and potential. This alluvial miner is the first company in South Africa to use the technology within its process plant recovery circuit, without preconcentration.

This was following a six-month trial period processing tailings.” Rockwell Diamonds CEO, James Campbell, says the results have been better than expected. “Rockwell was able to pay off the machines in only two months due to the diamonds it recovered from the tailings dumps.”

Bourevestnik’s technology offers two unique aspects within the X-ray sorting field, which lies at the heart of its success.

It provides a pulsed X-ray beam at high energy, as opposed to a continuous X-ray beam found in other available sorters.

23 bulk X-ray sorters sold The sale of four sorters to Rockwell at the end of 2012 marks the beginning of what is already a bright future for Impulelo. To date the company has sold 23 Bourevestnik X-ray sorters, which are in operation and include: • Trans Hex’s Baken (South Africa) – 2 machines • Lucara Diamond’s Karowe (Botswana) – 2 machines • Gem Diamonds’s Letseng (Lesotho) – 1 machine • Rockwell Diamonds’ Saxendrift Hill Complex (South Africa) – 4 machines • Steyn Diamonds (South Africa) – 7 machines • Super Stone Mining Processing kimberlite dumps (South Africa) – 2 machines • Stray Diamonds (South Africa) –2 machines • Firestone Diamonds’ Liqhobong Mine (Lesotho) – 1 machine on rental • Human Delwery (South Africa) – 1 machine • ProGlo (South Africa) – 1 machine.

More information is obtained about the diamond using this method, and other materials don’t retain their luminescence either, making it easier to distinguish between diamonds and guange material.

This also means the machine can handle and maintain much higher volumes (up to 100 tph) without compromising on recovery efficiency rates.

“In essence, the X-ray sorter pays for itself very quickly. It has a small footprint by comparison with DMS or rotary

pans. It can process ultra-coarse (-75 + 30 mm), coarse (-50 + 20 mm), middle (-20 + 10 mm) and fine (-10 + 5 mm) fraction materials. It can process wet gravels, requires very little water and electrical power to operate, requires few operators (depending on the size of the plant) and overall has less operating costs. It is considered more efficient as it eliminates the need for pre-concentration, which is usually followed by primary X-ray sorters.

This is now available in one bulk sorter.

IN SID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 23

Impulelo Technologies cc BULK X-RAY DIAMOND RECOVE ERY TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATES EXCELLENT RETURN ON INVESTMENT. DE Impulelo Technologies was instrumental in launching an exciting new range of diamond recovery sorting machines made available by the Production Enterprise “Bourevestnik”. Since introducing the high tonnage x-ray diamond recovery sorters and mini plants in 2010; clients of these “BV” plants have reported excellent results from processing dumps and Run of Mine and some have doubled up on the implementation of the technology.

Low cost, highly efficient solutions to treat high tonnages of Run of Mine (ROM) Diamond bearing ore is a new concept in the local market and these mini plants are successfully treating -50mm material at 100tph and tests have shown that one could process up to -75mm material. Very impressive was the recovery efficiency of low luminescent (Type IIa) diamonds which have proven very difficult to recover using conventional x-ray sorters.

A basic mini plant consists of a ROM feed bin followed by scrubbing (kimberlite ROM and kimberlite dumps) and wet screening. The mini plant receives sized material which can process ROM feed at an average of 60tph in a batch mode configuration.

Material can either be fed sequentially through the plant fitted with a single sorter (changeover between size fractions takes less than 60 seconds) or through a number of Bourevestnik machines in parallel.

Combinations of Primary Ore Sorting and final Concentrate plants have been designed and implemented at a number of local Kimberlite and Alluvial diamond mining operations.

For more information, please contact Pieter Wolmarans at Impulelo Technologies: Tel: +2711 794 3644, Mobile: +2783 3972320 or email: Pieter@impulelotechnologies.co.za.

DIAMONDS

DIAMOND DRIVE

Star Stellar S

TELLAR DIAMONDS has been exploring and evaluating numerous diamond tenements since it first listed in March 2010 and, in some cases, since well before that.

The star

AIM-listed diamond junior Stellar Diamonds has travelled the ‘long and winding’ road to take its West African exploration assets from exploration towards production. It has been well worth it though as the company is just one year (and a bankable feasibility study) away from raising cash to take its first project into production, writes Laura Cornish.

Its Sierra Leone-based Tongo kimberlite project has revealed itself to be highly lucrative and, as such, the company is focusing exclusively on the project and taking the final steps necessary to deliver an operational mine. Having undertaken and completed bulk sampling, drilling, confirming an inferred resource of 1.1 million carats of high-quality diamonds and completed an economic scoping study, the company has recently raised US$2.4 million (R24.7 million) to fund the final feasibility study required to assess funding options to build the mine.

Stellar may also look to attract a strategic partner to assist in the mine development.

Independent consulting company Paradigm Project Management (PPM) was appointed to conduct preliminary economic scoping studies over the Tongo Dyke-1 and Droujba (Stellar’s second project in Guinea) kimberlite projects. “The company comprises former De Beers members and has the required skills necessary for our projects,” says Stellar Diamonds’ CEO, Karl Smithson.

“Drilling and bulk sampling at Dyke-1 over the past 12 to 18 months to a depth TOP Tongo Process Plant ABOVE Preparing for a blast at Tongo LEFT Exploration drilling

24 INSID E M INING 1 0 | 2 0 1 3

DIAMONDS

of 300 m has delivered an inferred resource of just over 1 million carats at a grade of 120 cpht with an average modelled diamond value of US$248/carat. At this grade and value, the in-situ kimberlite value is calculated to be US$298/t, which is considered to be a very high value for a kimberlite,” Smithson continues.

“The economic scoping study of Tongo Dyke-1 defines a net present value that is many multiples the company’s current market capitalisation. Combined with the possibility of expanding this operation further, the board has elected to prioritise the development of the Tongo project while placing Droujba on temporary care and maintenance.”

Commencing with the final feasibility study – to gain further confidence, firm up the resource and elevate Tongo’s status from inferred to indicated (to 1.1 million carats) – requires approximately 7 000 m of additional drilling on the Dyke-1 project and another 4 000 m on surrounding dykes.

“As with the scoping study, we will appoint independent consultants to evaluate all feasibility aspects, including capital budgets, operational expenditure costs, mining rates, environmental and social regulatory requirements. With this information in hand and increased confidence levels, we are positive the banks will take a favourable view to supplying debt finance,” Smithson continues.

While PPM delivered a model that equates to a 13-year life of mine for Tongo, mining 1.13 Mtpa to deliver 682 000 carats, Stellar Diamond directors believe they can increase the lifespan to 17 years by mining 1.73 Mtpa

to deliver just over 1 million carats. A vertical shaft to 300 m will be constructed to access the carats.

The resource can also be increased with depth (to at least 600 m) and from drilling on the adjacent diamondiferous kimberlites. Dyke-4 has a grade of 109 cpht and diamond value of US$140/carat, giving an in-situ value of US$153/t. Dykes-2 and 3 have modelled grades of 140 cpht and 185 cpht respectively.

over 470 m of the 5 000 m strike length at the dyke – Katcha – has already defined 446 000 carats to 150 m, at a grade of 140 cpht.

PPM also undertook the economic scoping study for Droujba, focusing on the opencast potential of the pipe. Considering a large stripping ratio is necessary to mine to any considerable depth, PPM has declared the project uneconomic at current diamond prices. It is, however, viable to look at a

“The economic scoping study of Tongo Dyke-1 defines a net present value that is many multiples the company’s current market capitalisation.”

Karl Smithson, CEO, Stellar Diamonds “We may still be about two years away from producing our first diamonds, but we are already devoted to expanding this operation further and are committed to taking the project deeper or accessing the adjacent kimberlites,” Smithson notes.

More than a one-asset junior While the Guinea-based kimberlite project has been placed on hold for the moment, it is by no means an unimportant asset to the company.

A JORC-compliant inferred resource of 2.5 million carats has been defined for the project and a surface bulk sample grade has been established at 88 cpht at a value of US$45/carat. As with Tongo, an adjacent kimberlite dyke adds to the potential inferred resource base from this area. Drilling

three-year life of mine open pit opportunity at a 1:1 stripping ratio, mining over 313 000 carats (from 400 000 t of kimberlite and 400 000 t of waste) utilising existing plant and mining infrastructure at economic margins. Only US$3.1 million is required to see this project start.

“A deeper and longer life of mine is feasible at US$65/carat and while prices are not there currently, the first half of 2013 has been a good year and this will continue through into next year and beyond as demand exceeds supply in the mid-term future,” he concludes.

BELOW LEFT Stellar Diamonds built a school in the local village near Aquila BELOW Diamonds recovered from Tongo Dyke 1

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PROFILE | DIAMONDS

PARADIGM PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Moulding the perfect model Paradigm Project Management (PPM) has only been in business for seven years, but it has already celebrated the completion of its 100th project.

Director Jeremy Clarke believes the company’s success can be attributed to its “different” business model, writes Laura Cornish.

TOP LEFT PPM has expertise in tailings reclamations LEFT PPM prefers the owner's representative team methodology

P

PM MAY HAVE a small staff complement (generally between 25 and 30), but can handle mining projects of any size, for any duration and in any location. “Our biggest project to date is a R400 million diamond expansion plant; at the opposite end of the scale is the smallest, being the relocation of a genset. No project is too long, or too short, in our case ranging from two and a half years to two days. No region is too remote either,” Clarke reveals.

PPM has operated in 16 different African countries, namely Angola, Botswana,

26 INSID E M INING 1 0 | 2 0 1 3

Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Egypt, Ethiopia, Guinea, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and most recently Senegal.

PPM’s speciality skills extend across all major commodity groups, including gold, diamonds, platinum, manganese, coal, chrome, copper, zinc, cobalt, uranium, ferrochrome, silica sand, iron ore (haematite and magnetite), tantalum, nickel, fluorspar and rutile. The company’s services, in conjunction with its partners and preferred service providers, range from exploration to mine closure and also include plant operations. While studies remain PPM’s core business focus, it has the full EPCM service capability – suited to the junior and mid-tier mining market.

“We prefer and recommend the owner’s representative team methodology to our clients though.”

This relationship allows PPM to assist its clients with the early, upfront phases

where concepts and principles are being developed, innovation can be introduced and the most value add can be obtained in a project.

Skills acquisition model Unlike traditional engineering and project management houses, PPM’s business model is based on long-term partnership relationships, developed over more than 25 years by its management team, with preferred external service providers, each with expert skills in specific specialist areas across the entire mining value chain.

“Depending on the nature of our contracts, we engage with the relevant service providers for the delivery of their speciality,” says Clarke. “This gives us massive flexibility and with a contact list of more than 250 specialised people, it means we always have sufficient capacity to take on new work without having the continuous overhead burden. This business model also ensures that all of PPM’s projects are resourced using specialists with the most relevant experience regarding the location, commodity, technology and project phase.”

The advantages to this approach are even more widespread. “We are cost effective thanks to minimal overhead costs and can deliver projects quickly as well.”

The company has completed a study for a US$1 billion (R9.99 billion) copper project in the DRC, in just nine months.

Delivering maximum returns “Holistically, our entire business model targets business excellence, which in many instances overrides technical excellence. Our decisions are based on what is required to deliver maximum returns on a project for the business, which doesn’t necessarily quantify using more expensive technology. We want our client to make money, within the context of environmental, social and sustainability principles, and the Equator Principles.”

A perfect case in point is PPM’s study work on Lucara’s Karowe diamond project in Botswana. “This project is one of our greatest success stories. By successfully reducing capital expenditure by 60% and operating expenditure by 40%, we converted an unfeasible project into a viable one with the completion of a bankable feasibility study. And while we did not

PROFILE | DIAMONDS

oversee the plant’s construction, it was constructed and commissioned within PPM’s bankable feasibility study capital estimate and timeline, and is successfully producing diamonds today as a result.”

steps to turn a loss-making operation or business around.

“If this means taking on the position of an interim CEO, we can do this and PPM has a successful track record already to show for it,” Clarke points out.

The finer details “An area often forgotten or overlooked, which PPM places a lot of emphasis on, is Operational Readiness. This cost and time is significant to incorporate into a project at the study stage and we stress the importance of this heavily. Engineering companies often omit the cost and process required for this major step, which can lead to additional expenditure if not planned for.”

Another area in which PPM finds itself increasingly involved is project and business rescue operations – stepping TOP RIGHT PPM has in and taking full EPCM capabilities the necessary RIGHT Plant stockpile

Current and recent PPM projects • Nimini Gold Preliminary economic assessment in Sierra Leone • Sierra Rutile Feasibility study for new dredge, floating treatment plant, land plant upgrades and infrastructure • Rockwell Diamonds Wouterspan prefeasibility study • Stellar Diamonds Scoping studies for Tongo and Droujba • Kalagadi Manganese originally involved in the feasibility study and more recently as owner’s representative as this greenfield project nears commissioning • Glencore Xstrata Pre-feasibility for Zonnebloem • Kumba Iron Ore Operational Readiness work for Kolomela.

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relies on the daily integrity of details

PPM is the complete Project Management, Client Representative, Project Execution, and Engineering service organisation.

Lucara’s successful Karowe Mine is testament in part to PPM’s expertise: the application of innovative thinking and design during the Bankable Feasibility Study completed by PPM resulted in a 60% reduction in the capital estimate whilst retaining the desired operating functionality.

Contact us for the paradigm shift on your project Tel: +27 11 824 1704 Fax: +27 11 824 1705 Email: info@ppmprojects.co.za

Website: www.ppmprojects.co.za INSID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 27

DIAMONDS

EXC EPTI O N A L D I A M ON D S

An exceptional sale

D

IAMOND JUNIOR LUCARA Diamond Corp cannot be more pleased with its Botswana-based Karowe operation. It continues to recover spectacular diamonds that are selling at exceptionally high values.

The company recently announced the results from its second stone tender, held in early September. The special tender of Karowe diamonds consisted of 16 single stone lots. All 16 stones, totalling 1 028 carats, were sold for gross revenues of US$24.7 million (R246.92 million) or US$24 026/carat. According to the company, this is “an outstanding result”.

The highest value stone was a 135.4 carat diamond, which sold for US$6.37 million,

ABOVE A pink diamond from Karowe RIGHT 135.38 carats sold for US$6.37 million FAR RIGHT A smaller 33.15 carat stone sold for US$1.36 million (just short of US$41 000 per carat), demonstrating the high quality through the size ranges

with an additional three diamonds selling for more than US$2.5 million each.

The company will hold one regular tender during the third quarter where 80 000 carats will be on sale, including more than 30 single stones larger than 10.8 carats.

“This sale demonstrates that the market remains very strong for large and exceptional diamonds, adding significantly to

the value of Karowe mine, which continues to outperform expectations. We could not be happier with the result,” says William Lamb, Lucara president and CEO. During the second quarter, Lucara completed its first large and exceptional stone tender along with two regular tenders achieving gross proceeds of US$49.3 million.

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ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

T

HE EFFECTS OF migrant labour are eroding the ability of mines to forge sustainable, skilled and contented communities around their operations,” says Roger Dixon, chairman of consulting engineering firm SRK Consulting SA. Dixon says much of the current labour unrest in the industry can be owed to inappropriate labour decisions taken by mines over recent years and lack of government service provision in mine communities.

He says it has become increasingly clear that mines’ policy of offering workers a living-out allowance for accommodating themselves has had unforeseen negative impacts and exacerbated social problems in areas around mines.

“The migrant labour system has endured, placing severe financial stresses on mineworkers who still try to support a life at the mine and a life back in their home village,” he says. “The social and economic problems that this situation fosters are key to the recent unrest and need to be tackled directly.”

He questions the viability of suggestions from the presidency’s Mining Consultative Forum that mining rosters be adjusted to allow workers more home visits each year.

“It is mooted that a system of eight weeks on and two weeks off might be helpful, but this is likely to create more problems than it solves,” says Dixon. “We should really be creating the conditions to allow the workforce to settle in and around the mine environment on a permanent basis.”

This was effectively done in the development of gold mining towns like Welkom,

MINES AND STATE

Unravel migrant labour Strategies to resolve South Africa’s mining milieu will need to include drastic moves towards a settled labour force and a proactive dismantling of the migrant labour system. albeit in a racially discriminatory fashion; new strategies should explore the efficacy of this under today’s conditions of equality and constitutionality.

“Even the current use of terms like ‘labour-forwarding areas’ – to denote where mineworkers come from – seem to imply that mineworkers are just units of production to be ‘sourced’ from the rural areas,” he continues.

While Australia’s mining sector uses the ‘fly-in fly-out’ system to hold down accommodation costs on its remote mines, the negative social and family impacts of this system are well documented. Dixon says South Africa should to avoid following this example, as the social effects of fatherless families and disrupted communities are already deeply felt here.

“Clearly, the problem is complex, and the profitability and lifespan of many mines rule out some of the better options for mineworkers’ accommodation. But the solution needs to involve all stakeholders, including local government, making their contribution toward a long-term strategy for permanent urban settlements with secondary industries.”

Diversifying of local economies needs to be promoted, so that communities are not over reliant on the mine itself and can outlive the mines they service. This aim, explains Dixon, is already an important element of the Minerals Resources Development Act and is vital in leveraging South Africa’s future economy on its current mining activities.

He adds that tinkering with mine rosters to make home trips more frequent will further reduce mine productivity – a factor already under pressure due to longer distances from surface to the stopes as gold and platinum mines deepen.

“The sheer logistics of transporting thousands of workers long distances more often will also be fraught with risks related to road safety, staff coordination and operational efficiencies,” he concludes.

IN SID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 29

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ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

NE W NAME

New impetus When Italy’s industrial giant Tenova acquired Bateman Engineering in 2012, the process to rebrand and align the brand to Tenova Mining & Minerals was a massive undertaking. Eighteen months later, the process is complete. Bateman Africa, now Tenova Mining & Minerals South Africa, will use its new identity and name to create new impetus in the market, writes Laura Cornish.

W

HILE OUR BUSINESS and modus operandi are aligned with our parent company’s global brand, it is essential that our brand, name and reputation reflect this as well. The brand alignment of Bateman Africa to Tenova gives us immediate recognition as the South African operating arm of Tenova Mining & Minerals, and, as a result, we have gained new impetus to showcase our capabilities to the mining, industrial and municipal sectors,” says Felix Fongoqa, executive chairman of Tenova Mining & Minerals South Africa.

The company’s MD, Mike Deeks, is quick to add that the name change and brand migration was a slow and steady progress, giving the market sufficient time to adjust to the significant change, particularly in South Africa. “The focus and stance of the company, however, remains the same. We continue to stand for integrity, excellent service delivery and quality engineering through our strong process engineering and equipment supply capabilities, and this closer alignment to Tenova further enhances our ability to provide clients with solution based on advanced technologies.”

Tenova Mining & Minerals SA offers the complete range of Tenova Mining & LEFT Construction at the Kusasalethu elution facility OPPOSITE Richards Bay Coal Terminal Phase V Expansion, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa; Bateman Africa (now Tenova Mining & Minerals South Africa) was the main contractor for the project with responsibility for detailed design, construction and commissioning of the extended facility.

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ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

Minerals services in South Africa – including engineering, EPCM services, LSTK projects, mining and bulk materials handling equipment as well as advanced process technologies and plants, and comprehensive client support and aftermarket services. “We provide these across the full mining and minerals industry value chain,” says Deeks.

The company was recently awarded a Level 3 BBBEE rating. “We will work hard to retain our rating, which includes a 30% black shareholding in the company, while also upholding the integrity of a fully empowered company,” Deeks adds.

And, while neither Deeks nor Fongoqa deny that South Africa’s mining industry is in a depressed state, dealing with escalating input costs, inflation, labour unrest and lower commodity prices, they still believe that the country’s mining sector is ripe with opportunity. “The focus of mining companies is currently on tighter budgets and sweating of assets to the last drop. We have positioned ourselves to meet this growing demand,” Deeks notes.

“For Tenova Mining & Minerals SA, this has translated into an increased emphasis on the client support market, providing a full suite of aftermarket and refurbishment services over the life of a machine or plant.

Our aim is to assist clients to extract more value out of their existing installed machinery, by refurbishing and upgrading where possible, to extend the life of our clients’ plants and machines,” says Fongoqa. “For example, a recent tyre grinding project

extended the life of a Bradford Breaker by two years – a significant contribution to containing costs, given the average price of a new Bradford Breaker drum replacement is around R13 million.”

Helping the environment Another area ripe with opportunity is the environmental aspect of mining, as government places increasing pressure on the sector to be more compliant with environment legislation and regulation. This means reducing carbon footprints and minimising pollution threats. Johannesburg’s West Rand is littered with mine dumps that need to be eradicated. Tenova Mining & Minerals SA is already involved in such a project, the West Rand Optimisation Project, which is still at prefeasibility stage.

The company was also recently awarded a boiler emissions abatement (BEA) plant project from Impala Platinum-Refineries in South Africa. The BEA plant project is believed to be the first of its kind in Africa and is the largest air environmental plant order that has been pursued to date.

The project will result in the installation of an integrated plant, capable of efficiently and effectively removing pollutants, such

as fly ash particulate, sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxides from the boiler flue gas, exceeding the requirements of South Africa’s National Environmental Management: Air Quality Act. Situated in Springs, Impala PlatinumRefineries uses a steam-driven process across its base metals and precious metals refineries for matte conversion and purification of ore into a marketable product. An electrostatic precipitator (ESP) is currently used to reduce particulate content of flue gases discharging from the six-boiler steam plant. This plant configuration is no longer sufficient to comply with the requirements of the National Environmental Manage-

“Our aim is to assist clients to extract more value out of their existing installed machinery.” Felix Fongoqa, executive chairman, Tenova Mining & Minerals South Africa ment: Air Quality Act. As a result, the existing ESP will be decommissioned and replaced with the new BEA plant.

The plant is being designed to provide the most economical solution, while maintaining a low degree of technical risk and making optimal use of scarce resources by, for example, improving the boiler water

IN SID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 31

ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

feed system. Complying with Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act ISO 9000 and ISO 14000, the plant will reduce particulate matter (PM) from the boiler flue gas to less than 25 mg/Nm3, sulphur dioxide (SOx) to less than 200 mg/Nm3, and nitrogen oxides (NOx) to less than 150 mg/Nm3, as well as improve existing boiler heat recovery and boiler

work, which will take place in both a green and brownfield environment, is expected to commence in April 2014 and is estimated to be completed by December 2015. One of the challenges of the project is the need to limit plant downtime, as the plant operates 24 hours per day throughout the year, with a planned shutdown lasting only 60 hours, once a year. The plant configuration will ensure minimal downtime work, with only two major tie-ins scheduled for the June Mike 2014 planned Deeks, MD, Tenova Mining & shutdown. StraMinerals South Africa tegic by-passes and equipment feed water recovery systems. In addition, it redundancy have also been provided where will produce a minimal amount of waste re- applicable, to ensure that the new BEA plant sidual, reducing the environmental impacts does not lead to any stoppages to the existarising from waste handling or disposal. ing steam plant.

The major components of the BEA plant “This project is a repeat order from Impala will be an ELEX catalytic gas cleaning system Platinum following our successful installation for removal of NOx gases, three economisers of more than 10 electrostatic precipitators at for boiler heat recovery and a new boiler feed the company’s various mining locations. Such water system, a Simatek dry flue gas clean- repeat work is testimony to Tenova Mining & ing system with four Simatek pulse jet bag Minerals SA’s continuing success in supplying filter modules, a reagent storage silo and a pollution control systems that meet and exlime dosing system for SO2 and PM removal, ceed the high standards required by industry. as well as a dry particulate waste pneumatic Our ability to provide reliable and effective transfer system. systems is based on our world-class techDesign and engineering work will be carried nology and our experience gained through out in collaboration with major subcontrac- the supply of more than 2 700 dust control tors, but will be controlled in-house. Fabrica- systems by the Tenova Mining & Minerals tion of specialised equipment will take place Group,” says Fongoqa. overseas, with the bulk of the general equipTaking Kusile forward ment being fabricated in South Africa.

The contract was awarded in July 2013, In 2011, Eskom awarded Tenova Mining & and design and engineering work has com- Minerals a lump sum turnkey project for menced to run concurrently with procure- the 4 800 MW new coal-fired Kusile power ment activities until the end of the year. Site station, comprising three separate materials

“We will work hard to retain our rating, which includes a 30% black shareholding in the company.”

handling contracts: the terrace handling system, the stockyard handling system and the limestone handling facility. The contract will be completed in phases coinciding with the phased commissioning of the power station.

The scope of the project includes engineering and installation of the yard and inplant conveyors, stockyards, stacking and reclaiming machines, civil works and electrical and instrumentation work. The three packages include 79 conveyors, with a total length of over 16 km, and installation of 13 pieces of equipment, consisting of stackers, reclaimers and feeders for the coal and limestone stockyard packages. In May 2013, the company reached one million lost time incident-free man-hours on the project, which has been incident free since the start.

Extending Kusasalethu’s processing plant The five-tonne elution facility at Harmony’s Kusasalethu gold mine near Carletonville is an extension of the existing gold processing plant. It is being established as part of an initiative by Harmony to enhance efficiency by siting all related processing services in a single location. The EPCM project covers design and engineering, through to construction and commissioning of an acid wash elution system, electrowinning equipment, gold smelter house and reagent storage area, as well as all associated utilities such as motor control centre, transformers and tanks.

Work on the fast-track project commenced in August 2012, with design, engineering and construction activities of the various components of the elution facility proceeding in parallel with one another to ensure that the demanding project schedule could be met. The smelter house has been designed with sufficient space for the future potential installation of a furnace and bag house.

As a brownfield project, the elution facility had to be designed to accommodate the existing layout of the Kusasalethu processing plant. This resulted in only a small-sized site being available, with a limited laydown area available. As a result, most of the packages were modularised to reduce the storage area required at the mine. In addition, lagging of equipment was completed in Johannesburg, before delivery to the mine for erection. This was done to obviate the need for cladding material to be stored on-site.

Sishen Expansion Project: Tenova Mining & Minerals South Africa has a longstanding association with Sishen, having, in a joint venture, upgraded the production from Sishen iron ore mine by 13 Mtpa

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ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

An exciting study for Sishen The company recently completed an order of magnitude study on behalf of Kumba Iron Ore’s Sishen mine in the Northern Cape, where an opportunity exists for Kumba to improve revenue at Sishen by retrofitting its jig plant with ultra-high dense medium separation (UHDMS) technology utilising cyclones.

UHDMS plants operate with a higher medium density to separate valuables from waste.

Tenova Mining & Minerals SA was awarded the study contract in March 2013, based on the well-respected iron ore and DMS inhouse expertise within the Tenova Mining & Minerals Group. A sister company, Tenova Bateman Technologies, is in the process of constructing and commissioning a UHDMS pilot plant at Sishen. The study brief was to investigate the feasibility of retrofitting the current eight jig modules with UHDMS cyclone technology. Capital and operating costs were estimated at ±40% accuracy and a high-level process definition was developed together with engineering development, mainly based on a 3D model. While a functional and feasible UHDMS solution was

developed, further study work is required to develop the optimal design and an effective implementation strategy.

Another significant focus area “We are focusing on expanding our presence in the municipal sector, particularly with regard to new water and wastewater treatment projects. The government has indicated that considerable investment needs to be made into this sector of infrastructure and we have proven technologies and capabilities to take on much of this work. In line with this objective, we have also been registered as a Category 9ME contractor with the CIDB in South Africa, which means that we are able to carry out such projects of unlimited size for government and parastatals,” Deeks outlines.

The company’s Bellmer WinklePress mobile dewatering belt press is ideal for sewage and effluent treatment in mining, municipal and general industrial applications. It has been used successfully in Southern Africa for

Bellmer Winklepress dewatering belt press

many years in municipal wastewater treatment plants and Tenova Mining & Minerals SA is aiming at extending the technology’s range of applications.

“A demonstration plant is available to showcase its performance and efficiency to clients prior to them committing to building full-scale dewatering plants for their sites,” notes Deeks.

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ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

ME R GE R DEAD END

Plain sailing ahead

MDM Engineering Group’s merger with Australia’s Sedgman may be off the table but it has in no way impacted on the company’s robust financial position or slowed its organic growth strategy to secure new project work on the African continent, writes Laura Cornish.

M

DM’S EXECUTIVE director, George Bennett, admits that while life for the company hasn’t changed since the two companies chose to go their separate ways, the rationale for the merger is still “a good one”. “The combination of Sedgman’s strong coal capabilities and access to a wide Australian client base with African-focused projects, coupled with our strong African execution capability and metals and minerals experience would have created an entity with unparalleled competitive advantage.”

MDM’s chairman, Bill Nairn, adds: “Although this was a disappointment given the strategic rationale for both parties, the MDM board looks forward to growing the business further as an independent entity

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as well as considering alternative strategic growth opportunities to deliver value for our shareholders.”

MDM’s 2013 financial results speak for themselves and indicate the company’s strong financial position now and going forward. Its order book for FY 2013 has translated into an increase of 161% in profit before tax to US$20.4 million (about R209.84 million), compared to US$7.8 million in the previous year. Sedgman, which recently announced its FY 2013 financial results, declared a profit before tax of US$13.4 million, a substantial decrease from its previous year (US$58.9 million) as well as its US$55 million forecast.

TOP GoGold tailings to be reclaimed ABOVE GoGold typical landscape for the heap leach pad LEFT The GoGold project is located in Mexico BELOW MDM completed work on the Tharisa PGM and chrome project in SA in 2012

MDM’s experience spans 11 different African countries. It has worked on 14 different gold projects from study to execution – in this calendar year alone. There may be a perception in the market that MDM is predominately a gold focused specialist, but the company’s processing skills are widespread, and covers any commodity. “We have a solid track record in platinum, uranium, copper, zinc and even coal. We choose not to actively pursue coal because it has such a low barrier to entry, from a technology perspective.

Because MDM’s capability covers the entire processing range, we can take on both complex and simple projects. Gold, however, remains our common thread.”

Since announcing the termination merger, MDM has acquired an impressive new list

ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

of projects, proving its continuing success as an independent entity. Projects include study work for new gold projects in Liberia, Ghana and Zimbabwe, and a copper project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Two projects also moved into execution phase, including the full EPCM contract for Mexico’s gold and silver GoGold project and the completion and commissioning of AngloGold Ashanti’s MWS uranium plant.

“Despite the current stagnant market, we are also expecting to take another two gold projects into execution before the end of the year, as well as a South Africa-based coal project. This will extend by a further three or four projects in 2014,” says Bennett. “We are also receiving on average two enquiries a week for new work, mainly in Africa and also further afield in places like Mexico and Mongolia.”

“The MDM board looks forward to growing the business further as an independent entity.”

George Bennett, executive

Adapting to change

director, MDM

Bennett affirms that one of the largest contributing factors to its success is its EPC culture. “We are not a man-hours business, and we continue to keep our overhead costs low.

That said, I am fairly confident that our profitability per employee is probably the best in the industry.”

Looking to the future, MDM’s experience in Africa will count substantially in its favour. “Over the past 10 or 15 years, African governments have become more informed about mining and regulations as well as the necessity for social and environmental licences to operate. Governments are more tax-savvy and are encouraging the establishment of relationships with locally registered companies. Gone are the days where anyone could simply come into a country and develop a mine. Thanks to our mature African working portfolio, we have evolved to meet the changes and current needs that the industry is required to comply with.”

Bennett also believes that mining business will start to pick up in the latter half of the year with growth momentum building afterwards, which definitely includes the gold sector. “I have always had a good feel for the gold price and have been telling some of our clients recently that US$1 300 seems to be the bottom and the gold price will pull back. I believe gold has reached its lowest point and will continue to recover from here on out.”

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ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

F OOL P R OO F FLUO R

A-grade mining

model

International engineering firm Fluor is no stranger to working in remote regions. Thanks to the creation and ongoing refinement of a standardised project execution model, the company is well equipped to successfully deliver cost-effective projects on the last remaining resource-rich continent: Africa, writes Laura Cornish.

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T

HE AFRICAN CONTINENT, with an abundance of resources, holds the future mining projects. “Engineering entities that seek to establish a successful track record in Africa need to understand and acknowledge the continent’s associated challenges. Only then can projects be delivered according to plan,” says Etienne Bredell, functional lead for process engineering in the mining and metals division of Fluor South Africa.

Although each African country carries its own unique risks, they share many as well.

“The study phases for projects in developing countries are often perceived to be lower risk periods of the project life cycle. Taking studies through to execution is where the risk exposure dramatically increases,” Bredell continues. “The lack of experience and associated skills availability, language barriers and the drive for localisation presents challenges to the execution of projects in undeveloped countries. A lack of available infrastructure and services such as

ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

communications, power, roads, etc. often leads to underestimating capital costs and insufficient execution time frames. Many projects fail to deliver what was originally promised to clients as a result, in some instances rendering projects unviable and unsuccessful.”

With that said, Bredell believes Fluor, across all its global offices, boasts an impressive success rate for complex and largescale project execution in remote regions, including Africa, thanks to the adherence of a mature, standardised business execution model, implemented in such a way that any project works, on any continent, anywhere.

“It provides project certainty, in terms of cost, schedule and performance.”

The model has been developed over decades, from building large and complex facilities Fluor designed for remote sites across the globe. It presents a comprehensive framework and a proven model of success for the company.

“The most important model element, that sets the foundation for the entire project, is starting the design phase with the end in mind. Understanding the construction and commissioning requirements upfront, and adjusting the design to accommodate this early on, delivers significant cost savings for the customer,” Bredell indicates.

Model execution elements At the heart of Fluor lies a vast and global skill set across 14 mining offices and 6 200 mining and metals employees. “Subject matter experts are available for us to draw on for technical assistance and support on any project in any region.” Drawing on specific skills sets and global experience offers significant advantages to any project design or execution requirement.

“To ensure we develop cost-effective ‘constructible’ solutions that can be implemented with certainty, we integrate engineering, procurement and construction requirements early in the design phase. It is essential to have a direct connection between the study effort and the construction intent.”

This ensures that project estimates reflect a practical execution approach, from a cost and schedule perspective.

The model also incorporates well-defined value improvement practices – formalised processes that look to improve the techno business case of projects through process simplification, constructability, energy and layout optimisation, to name a few. Modular construction methodologies form a significant part of this, which is a recognised technique for providing more control during construction.

“Fluor has the ability to pre-erect and commission up to 90% of a plant prior to LEFT Fluor is capable of operating in remote locations – Pueblo Viejo Dominicana gold and silver mine, Dominican Republic BELOW A typical example of prefabricated modules from one of Fluor's modular yards, on its way to site

assembly on-site, depending on practical considerations. Modular plants, even on a large scale, require smaller construction teams onsite and shorter erection times (up to 30% less hours), which in turn delivers cost savings. We are serious about this approach and the benefits it has to offer clients, especially in remote locations,” Bredell notes. To prove the point, Fluor recently acquired a stake in a modular construction yard in the Philippines to support Fluor’s needs for cost-effective development of modular solutions. The company also facilitates modular requirements locally through construction entities located in Modderfontein and Boksburg.

“We have an established procurement network capability, designed to source the highest grade equipment and materials at the best available price for large projects from locations including China, India, Indonesia and Korea. Our capability includes pre-qualification criteria, stringent quality control, reliable communication channels, knowledge of contractual terms and conditions as well as management of logistics in foreign countries. This capability is enabled using an experienced team and offers cost as well as schedule opportunities.”

Fluor utilises an in-house designed software system that represents an interface platform between offices, clients and site.

The system, Projects OnLine, incorporates numerous programmes to integrate and manage all project elements, including: • project accounting • planning/scheduling • engineering progress • materials management • enterprise management 

ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

Africa ’s leader in natural resource and development solutions

• change management • contracts management • integrated automation tools • commissioning handover • risk management.

Training and skills development – an important element for project execution Fluor’s worldwide training programmes have been developed over 40 years. The

embedded and respected safety culture. “We have a high level of commitment to safety, which starts at management level and integrates into every Fluor employee and even every subcontractor to Fluor.

In January this year, the company’s chairman and CEO, David Seaton, was recognised by the National Safety Council (NSC) for Fluor’s commitment to world-class safety.

He was one of only eight people who were

“Engineering entities that seek to establish a successful track record in Africa need to understand and acknowledge the continent’s associated challenges.” Etienne Bredell, functional lead, process engineering, mining and metals division, Fluor South Africa company provides its projects with skilled labour necessary to support construction requirements in a safe and productive manner, having trained in excess of 250 000 people globally. Through its Secunda craft training centre, more than 35 000 people have benefited from craft training initiatives.

Training facilities were also developed in Botswana on the Jwaneng and Morupule projects for example, greatly contributing to the development of the trained labour in Botswana where both projects are located.

Safety, the final and challenging link A model for working in Africa would not be successful without a properly implemented, Fluor can pre-erect and commission up to 90% of a plant prior to assembly on-site

Tel: + 27(0) 11 441 1111 www.srk.co.za

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recognised, globally. The NSC 2013 CEOs Who ‘Get It’ is an annual list of business leaders who build and maintain exemplary safety cultures in their organisations. “Of the core values that form the bedrock of Fluor’s principles – safety, integrity, teamwork and excellence – it is our commitment to safety that, above all else, defines and drives our company culture,” says Seaton.

The NSC defines four key pillars that demonstrate a ‘journey to safety excellence’.

These are committed leadership and employee engagement, sound safety processes and procedures, continuous risk reduction, and measuring and improving performance.

Fluor has continued to improve its safety performance year on year. The company recorded no fatalities and 9.7 million safe man hours across its three most recent projects in Africa.

ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

INFRASTRUCTURE AND PROCESSING

The perfect

marriage The successful route to building new mines in Africa is considering infrastructure requirements upfront and incorporating them at feasibility stage, writes Laura Cornish.

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RADITIONALLY, THE driver for engineering firm selection for mine feasibility studies has been relevant process plant design experience, with the secondary assumption that any related infrastructure scope can be successfully delivered.

This may have been realistic when plant and equipment were the main cost consideration for greenfield developments, but this is no longer the case, particularly in Africa. Today, infrastructure dominates mine capital cost and risk, and can represent as much as 75% of a new project’s capital requirements, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. “For less developed countries in Africa, South America and Asia, the infrastructure

costs are likely to be even higher as a percentage of mine development cost,” says Andrew Keith, general manager for JK Aurecon, an alliance established between JKTech and Aurecon in 2012 to address such challenges.

“The reality today is that infrastructure has become more challenging for mining companies to develop than process plants, and it is not their core expertise. Costs of the facilities “outside the fence” can amount to as much as 80%,” says Linsey Dyer, Aurecon South Africa business development manager. “It is also a fact that sustainability issues have become a significant driver of project delays.”

Keith continues: “Easier, cheaper, higher grade ores are depleted and the industry has to develop mines in further, less developed geographies and with lower ore grades. This is reflected in the average ore grade of global mineral operations for certain ores declining by as much as 30% this century. Sustainability issues have been exacerbated by these same factors: the larger the proposed footprint of the project – geographical, logistical, energy intensity, environmental and social – the JK Aurecon’s expertise includes all major infrastructure in Africa

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ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

There is a huge demand for power stations in Africa

The five capitals NATURAL The environment impacted by the development. Mining developments typically have negative impacts on natural capital and traditional EIA processes are focused around minimising those impacts. The methodology used looks for opportunities to enhance the project through both limiting impacts and building on the existing natural capitals.

SOCIAL Communities that interact with the development including the surrounding communities, the broader regional community and the new worker communities and teams that develop. The methodology looks to build positive community outcomes through opportunities from the mine development.

HUMAN People’s health, knowledge, skills and motivation, needed for productive work. Enhancing human capital through education and training is central to a flourishing economy.

MANUFACTURED (also known as physical capital) Material goods or fixed assets that contribute to the production process rather than being the output itself, e.g. infrastructure, tools, machines and buildings.

FINANCIAL Representation of the return on company investment in the project, often expressed as NPV. Traditionally, this has been the key factor in determining whether a project will be pursued and then the other four capitals are massaged to achieve this target. The methodology adopted by JK Aurecon recognises that without substantially positive financial capital no project will proceed, but factors this as just one of the considerations in assessing the optimum approach to the project.

more complex and potentially delayed the time to market becomes in terms of achieving social licence to operate and authority approvals.”

Surrounding and neighbouring communities are becoming increasingly informed about their ‘land rights’ and local governments are implementing regulations that protect their people. Miners have to respect this and comply. “Indeed a trend in the modern world of resource project development is that to achieve true social licence to operate is that simple compliance is no longer the benchmark.”

In line with the recognition that the mine development landscape has changed and evolved, Aurecon established an alliance with acknowledged metallurgical and process specialist JKTech in order to provide a new feasibility model that integrates expert assessment of mine processing with enabling infrastructure in a holistic way to enhance project value.

Such a model incorporates process plant design as one of several specialist packages that will deliver benefits including reduced and more certain project costs, lower or phased requirements for electricity and water, leading to more sustainable mines, and staged delivery of infrastructure in line with more accurate project life cycle scheduling.

“As a combined entity, we can assist clients with every development aspect to deliver a sustainable, cost-effective solution,” Dyer adds. “An optimised ore body development with smart infrastructure delivery ultimately gets the highest value product to the market as quickly as possible.” The combination of Aurecon’s historical infrastructure expertise with JKTech’s mineral processing methodology and ore characterisation techniques offers client solutions in the global resources project development market that effectively release additional project value and reduce total project costs, through an alternative method of delivering on every project aspect.

Aurecon is strong and experienced in pitto-port logistics, infrastructure and integrated development planning in a broad range of economies. What’s more, Keith says the group understands that the mining industry globally is under immense pressure to provide sustainable economic and social benefits to the communities in which they operate, and has a service Mokolo Crocodile Water Augmentation

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ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

offering that enables project owners to achieve just this.

“We use a number of business registered tools to ensure all project elements are incorporated into a study or design. Our sustainable operations tool is based on five sustainable capital concepts, which look at natural, social, human, financial and manufactured capital. We look at sustainability across the five capitals and come up with innovative opportunities, in partnership with all stakeholders, on how to make mine sites more sustainable without depleting shareholder value,” Dyer notes.

According to Dyer, the alliance could not have been better timed. “Most mining companies are starting to appreciate the necessity to look at new projects from this viewpoint and are thinking along these lines, particularly at concept stage.”

At the time when the alliance was first announced, Paul Hardy, CEO of Aurecon and Dr Dan Alexander, CEO of JKTech, described the deal succinctly: “This alliance is supported by a cultural alignment and desire between our two organisations to think outside the box, to provide original design solutions for our clients in line with their project’s technical and geographical characteristics. Optimising infrastructure design with plant and mine design becomes more critical as the costs and demands for power, water, steel, etc. increase.

Aurecon’s expertise with infrastructure combined with JKTech’s geometallurgy, mining and processing expertise along with one of the largest databases of processing plants that exist, will lead the mining industry into the next phase of optimised mine design.”

The alliance works The benefits of the JK Aurecon approach are well illustrated by a recent example of a nickel company

that wanted to bring a new ore deposit on stream as rapidly as possible in a race to get concentrate to market.

The mine had used existing concentrator and infrastructure designs from another one of its projects in order to fast track the mine (‘cut and paste engineering’).

The final project grossly underperformed and the loss of value over seven months of lost recovery completely swamped any cost savings and NPV benefits from accelerating the schedule.

Unfortunately, the lesson was not well learnt and in a subsequent project the

scoping study was planned along similar lines ignoring geometallurgical factors that had contributed to the lost recovery in the previous project.

“Our subsequent review of the scoping study and holistic opportunity identification integrating infrastructure together with processing development concluded that for no additional capital investment, the mine could deliver up to 12% increased revenues at 2% reduced operating costs, and, importantly, at highly reduced risk of failure to achieve target plant throughputs,” Keith concludes.

ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

E ME R GING ENGINEERS

A cash competitive C Engineering companies catering to the junior and mid-tier mining sector have and continue to achieve considerable success in the current depressed economic climate. The reason is twofold: they are catering to a growing sector and they know how to keep overhead costs low, resulting in competitive prices, writes Laura Cornish.

TOP The Kangala plant pre-erected off site BELOW Northam's milling and flotation plant, recovering PGMs from slag

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ONSULTING AND metallurgical engineering experts Mineral Resource Development (MRD) fits perfectly into the junior to mid-tier mining space and is well diversified across the entire commodity spectrum, including ferrochrome and copper, nickel, coal, diamonds, manganese and titanium, gold, platinum and other PGMs, chromite and iron, vanadium, fluorspar, silica and cobalt. MRD has the capabilities to design and construct and operate plants on an outsourced basis as well to treat niobium, tin, lead, zinc and rare earth elements.

On the back of its growing success over the years, the company is looking to grow its business by diversifying its service offering and capabilities, but will retain its core capabilities and focus.

“Our processing plant design, build and operate model is focused at the current and emerging market – small-scale projects. Gone are the days where a few mining majors dominated all the local resources. We are ideally suited to these types of projects and often provide mining companies with the skills they do not have in-house,” states Jacques Badenhorst, MRD director.

The company prides itself on its ability to provide fit-for-purpose design and operational solutions on a turnkey basis, from studies through to final product

ENGINEERING & CONSULTING

game changer delivery, at “extremely competitive pricing”. “This is because our designs are customised, but based on previous success models,” adds operations director, Harry Larkins.

Another contributing factor to the company’s ongoing success is its strength in dump reclamation and tailings treatment projects, where it has an established track record in the gold, platinum, heavy minCivil work foundation has started erals and copper comat Kangala modities in particular.

“As metallurgical experts, we are proficient in a number of technologies including leaching and precipitation, solvent extraction, electrowinning, flotation, X-ray and optical sorting, gravity separation and magnetic separation. We have also aligned ourselves with technology suppliers in certain areas, which only further add to our expertise and skill,” Larkins continues.

Diversifying into new areas “One-stop shop – it may be a commonly used industry term, but is one we want the mining industry to associate with the MRD name. This means expanding into the areas of the mining value chain where we don’t currently have a presence,” Badenhorst outlines. This is a current MRD priority, and something the company is already working to deliver on.

Infrastructure development is one of these areas, and MRD is hoping to announce its first major project shortly. Larkins adds that it includes all infrastructure components, including power stations, roads, water, housing, buildings, etc. This includes new and innovative ways of doing civil work aimed at saving money and reducing the labour force.

Badenhorst says the company is also looking to establish a division that provides opencast and underground contract mining, first and foremost to its own operations. The director is referring to the company’s third new business avenue, owning its own mines – specifically coal at this time.

“We have already bought into an exploration company in Botswana with a coal asset that we hope to take through to a producing mine. Drilling on the deposit is currently under way,” he adds. “I see a strategic future for Botswana and have no doubt that those who find a way to export their coal will be prosperous in the region.”

The final additional business aspect MRD will add to its service capabilities is in-house test work. “Our intention here is to build a range of pilot plants, housed within its own facility, which will cater first and foremost to the coal sector.

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It will bridge perfectly with our current metallurgical capabilities and speed up our service offering further,” Larkins notes.

MRD is currently evaluating a coal expansion project in Malawi; a ferromanganese project in Zambia, which is imminent; and a maghemite project in South Africa, which could produce a number of products including a titanium chloride slag and vanadium smelter product. The company is also working hard to ensure the plant it has designed for Universal Coal is ready for first production in February next year. (See page 22 of the September 2013 issue of Inside Mining).

“One-stop shop – it may be a commonly used industry term, but is one we want the mining industry to associate the MRD name with”

PROFILE | TRANSPORT

Enabling African regional development

TRANSNET FREIGHT RAIL

Transnet Freight Rail (TFR), the largest operating division of Transnet SOC, is a world-class freight transport company, transporting bulk, break-bulk and containerised freight on approximately 20 500 km of railway.

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T MAINTAINS AN extensive rail network across South Africa that connects with other rail networks in the subSaharan region, with its rail infrastructure representing about 80% of Africa’s total.

The company is proud of its reputation for technological leadership beyond Africa as well as within Africa, where it is active in some 17 countries. TFR operates using a scheduled railway philosophy; this encompasses operating trains in accordance with an Integrated Train Plan (ITP) that is appropriately resourced to optimise capacity through careful deployment of assets

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to extract efficiencies. The aim is to significantly improve operational efficiency and customer service delivery with the help of the following six business units: • agriculture and bulk liquids • coal • container and automotive • iron ore and manganese • steel and cement • mineral mining and chrome.

The company also has an international business arm, which is an interface between TFR, ports and SADC railways. It enables African regional development through integrated

planning and infrastructure development with its over-border railway hubs and intermodal ports. It also coordinates and grows TFR’s activities in the neighbouring states and identifies new markets in an effort to extend the company’s operational footprint.

African regional development has led to the establishment of joint operating centres (JOC) with the strategic intent of enabling regional integration – to be achieved through the institutional framework of JOC in Maputo, Mahalapye and Bulawayo. The railway operators in the African region will execute the scheduled railway philosophy

PROFILE | TRANSPORT

seamlessly, eliminating existing country boundary complexities. This will align the railway companies in each of these corridors in order to execute one unified railway system. The primary objectives are to achieve operational efficiencies and improve real-time communication in the African region. To give effect to TFR’s African strategy, the three JOCs will be operational by November 2013.

The very core of TFR’s business is in the movement of high-density cargo over long distances. It services a wide range of industries including, but not limited to, mining, coal, iron ore, manganese, steel, chrome, cement, granite manufacturing, agriculture, automotive, petroleum and chemicals.

The company has developed and is implementing a major new strategy, which is part of Transnet’s greater market demand strategy (MDS). The key element of the strategy is a shift of traffic from road to rail.

In accordance with the strategy, the company has committed itself to railing more than 350.3 Mt of cargo a year by 2018/19, the financial year when the MDS will reach its maturity.

TFR has positioned itself to becoming a profitable and sustainable freight railway business, assisting in driving the competitiveness of the South African economy.

Through investment, TFR will be able to optimise its capital portfolio, build a worldclass capital execution function and leverage

TFR has committed itself to railing more than 350.3 Mt of cargo a year by 2018/19, the financial year when the MDS will reach its maturity

capital procurement and localisation. TFR is a customer-focused railway company committed to delivering freight reliably.

Over the next seven years, TFR has been striving to grow its market share from 25 to 35%, transporting 350 Mt of freight and creating 10 232 jobs within the rail sector.

The expected contribution to the economy is a reduction of 6 200 trucks on the road per annum, 3.9 Mt less carbon dioxide per annum and an overall reduction of total logistics costs by between 4 and 7%.

Steel and cement The steel and cement (SAC) business unit (BU) aims to improve customer service and operational efficiency to grow and sustain rail market share in bulk flows of inbound and outbound products. SAC BU encapsulates the steel, cement and lime industries within South Africa. Product services by SAC range from bulk coal, lime and iron ore to finished steel products and bagged cement.

Due to the cost and time sensitivity of the SAC BU, one of its specific strategies is the development and implementation of a market development strategy focusing on collaboration with the industry, in order to grow the outbound less than train load sectors (accessRAIL) of the business.

Furthermore, it is important to develop innovative investment models in order to extract private sector capital.

SAC is crucial to the economy of South Africa and cement is supplied to domestic markets and neighbouring markets such as Namibia, Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The largest South African consumers of steel products are the manufacturing sector at 56%, the construction sector at 27% and the mining sector at 4%. TFR is continuously focusing on developing and upgrading infrastructure within the growing SAC industry.

Mineral mining and chrome Mineral Mining and Chrome focuses on the transportation of magnetite flows from Phalaborwa to Richards Bay; Broodsnyersplaas in Mpumalanga; and Maputo, Mozambique.

Rock phosphate moves from Phalaborwa to Richards Bay and chrome/ferrochrome from Rustenburg to Witbank and from Steelpoort to Richards Bay. Granite is transported from Rustenburg to Richards Bay.

Coal The Coal BU focuses on the transportation of export and domestic coal by rail to various destinations, including Richards Bay, Vryheid, Ermelo, Ogies and Welgedag. Export coal is transported from Mpumalanga’s 44 rich mines and descends from the Highveld through rural KwaZulu-Natal and terminates at the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT). The 580 km long double line is bidirectionally signalled and fully electrified.

Two 100 wagon trains are coupled to form one 200 wagon train at Ermelo, typically using CCL type wagons.

Through the domestic coal sector, the Coal BU plays a vital role in the transportation of requisite amounts of coal to Eskom and other industries to generate electricity for the country. Furthermore, the unit is responsible for exporting sizeable amount of coal to generate billions in foreign exchange through the RBCT, Maputo ports, Navitrade, Transnet Port Terminal in Richards Bay and Bulk Connection in Durban. This unit’s commitment in transporting coal (South Africa’s ‘black gold’) is in line with the company’s long-term MDS and aids in the bid to shift rail-friendly freight traffic from road to rail.

Iron ore and manganese This BU’s focus is on the export transportation of iron ore and manganese. It operates in the Saldanha, Sishen, Postmasburg, Kimberley and Port Elizabeth areas. Iron ore is transported from the mines in the Northern Cape to the Port of Saldanha. Manganese is transported from the mines in the Northern Cape to Port Elizabeth and Durban harbours.

Manganese for domestic usage is transported to, among others, Meyerton, Fairview, Clewer, Nelspruit and Cato Ridge.

Transnet Freight Rail is a division of Transnet SOC Limited.

Reg. no: 1990/000900/30 Transnet is an authorised financial services provider. FSP no: 18828

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PROFILE | TRANSPORT

Coal export line boosted PROJECT SHONGOLOLO

Transnet Freight Rail (TFR) is introducing a new 200 wagon train service on its export coal line, which will run directly from the Richards Bay Coal Terminal (RBCT) to the mines in Mpumalanga, giving the company the capability to exceed 81 Mtpa in the next financial year, should the coal be available.

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PROFILE | TRANSPORT

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HE NEW SERVICE, called Project Shongololo, entails bypassing the Ermelo yard leg of the service, which will significantly reduce train handling processes.

Prior to the introduction of the service, trains were built at the Ermelo yard through a process where 100 empty wagons were dispatched to the mines for loading and then returned to the Ermelo yard to be built into 200 wagon trains, which were then forwarded to RBCT. This process was cumbersome, involving significant train handling and shunting to couple and decouple wagons.

Commenting on the initiative, TFR chief executive Siyabonga Gama says this service will drastically reduce cycle times from an average of 58 to 41 hours for locomotives and for wagons a decrease from 63 to 48 hours.

“Decreasing the handling processes of trains will allow for higher reliability, which will equate to improved sustainability and service predictability. This is part of the scheduled railway philosophy introduced by TFR two years ago.”

Project manager Pragasen Pillay says: “The service will increase weekly railed export coal capacity from the current 1.4 Mt per week to a potential 1.85 Mt, equating to a 30% increase on current capacity. The number of export coal trains per day will increase from 25 to a potential 32 trains. And moving into the fourth quarter of this year we will see 34 trains per day.

“This will give confidence and guarantee the delivery of 1.7 Mt per week. As TFR ramps up in the fourth quarter, this capacity will increase to 1.95 Mt. This will enable the company to provide capacity to emerging miners.”

TFR will now be poised to deliver for the coal sector, both domestic and export, in excess of 2 Mt per week – an annualised delivery of 96 Mt. The service will additionally free up train slots, which can be utilised to address other domestic demands such as coal for Eskom’s Majuba power station. Customers can now increase production by making investments to ramp up efficiencies in their operations because of the increased capacity available to them.

Coal stemming from the Lephalale and Waterberg regions will also enjoy the benefits of this unlocked potential. In addition, the TOP & OPPOSITE Project Shongololo will expand the coal export line capacity substantially

“The service will increase weekly railed export coal capacity from the current 1.4 Mt per week to a potential 1.85 Mt, equating to a 30% increase on current capacity”

debottling of Ermelo will allow TFR to run longer general freight trains, thus increasing capacity for general freight business as well.

For example, chrome traffic from Pyramid South will be increased from 75 to 100 wagon trains, which translates to 1 800 t more per train, as a direct result of the efficiencies introduced to the yard.

Project Shongololo introduces a new efficient use of technologies; the wire distributed power (WDP) and AC/DC traction will be used concurrently to render the service. This methodology will also be deployed in the general freight once it has been embedded on the coal line.

Introducing this methodology allows TFR to fulfil its mandate, which is to lower the cost of doing business in South Africa. Furthermore, the coal mining industry becomes a more viable and profitable business to venture into – a move that will place

South Africa on the map as a serious global market player.

The main directive of the company’s Market Demand Strategy (MDS) is to capture rail-friendly cargo from road to rail, and continued interventions such as the Shongololo project are constantly being explored in order to assist TFR in reaching the targets as set out in its seven-year business plan. “Transnet Freight Rail is experiencing a drastic shift in paradigm and is working tirelessly to improve its customer service offering while serving the South African economy,” says Gama.

“Operational efficiency improvements and innovation are at the core of the MDS and this project must be seen as a step in the right direction in our ongoing quest to improve and increase coal railed to Richards Bay and to ensure that the channel potential is optimised,” he concludes.

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TRANSPORT & LOGISTICS

B OT SWANA SEC URED

Making a move on

Botswana-based transport and logistics company Transport Holdings is looking to replicate its successful business model in Mozambique where forecasted exports for the country’s mining sector are significant, writes Laura Cornish.

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E HAVE ACHIEVED a certain measure of success along the Durban-Botswana corridor, particularly in the mining industry, which has given us the confidence to look slightly further afield for growth,” says Transport Holdings’ MD, Anthony Lee. “And we have set our sights on the Mozambique corridor. Major new coal mines are emerging, offering great opportunities for logistics providers like us. We believe with our expertise and understanding of the mining industry, we can offer competitive solutions to the industry.”

Lee admits that while mining opportunities in Africa are abundant, especially in

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areas such as Zambia and Mozambique, mining companies face logistical problems, like how to get their product to the port with the limited rail infrastructure available specifically.

“Although there are many rail development projects on the go, we believe there will be a significant delay in providing the required rail capacity in time, and this creates an opportunity for road transporters to fill that critical gap, as we have done for many years.”

Transport Holdings takes pride in its ability to “keep its ears to the ground”, enabling it to keep track of the latest mining industry developments and opportunities,

“while continuing in our relentless pursuit of service excellence and best practice supply chain management to our existing clients within the mining industry. We know the mining industry’s logistics requirements intimately and we are able to foresee solutions that may complement our clients’ businesses, often before they realise it.”

The company manages a fleet of roughly 250 vehicles, which is a mixture between its own vehicles and outsourced managed logistics vehicles for shorter term contracts or ad hoc work. Its fleet includes an array of vehicle types, which ranges from 1 t trucks to superlink tippers, flat decks and tauteliners.

It handles bulk cargo as well as break-bulk and can move anything from an envelope to a 150 t load.

Transport Holdings boasts a healthy portfolio of Botswana-based mining clients, including African Copper, BCL, Debswana (Morupule and Jwaneng) and Norilsk Nickel Africa (Tati nickel mine), to name a few. “We are currently moving up to 75 000 tpm of ore for African Copper from its Takadu mine to its Mowana plant. This is an off-road project with an array of unique challenges, which we have been able to overcome with great

TRANSPORT & LOGISTICS

Mozambique success to such an extent that we have even taken on certain responsibilities related to the gravel road maintenance,” Lee outlines.

“We are also currently working on delivering components for a new modular tailings treatment plant project for Jwaneng mine, where meeting the required deadlines is critical and ensuring that the newly manufactured plant arrives at the mine in a disassembled manner in perfect condition. This requires meticulous planning and communication between the project team, their suppliers and the transport authorities, and we are confident that we will meet (if not exceed) our client’s requirements to.”

Although Transport Holdings is looking to take its business into Mozambique, Lee says Botswana’s mining sector still offers professional logistics providers great opportunities to grow in line with the economy. “To quote the minister of Minerals, Energy and Water Resources, Onkokame Kitso Mokaila, during the recent Down Under Mining Conference in Perth, Botswana is ranked number one as a mining destination in Africa. It is the most transparent country in Africa to do business with and there are multiple options for the development and export of Botswana’s coal and it provides an encouraging investment environment.

“We cannot thank our mining clients in Botswana enough for their loyal support and their professional approach towards world-class supply chain management.

They are the reason we exist today and have been instrumental in the development of our current expertise and our company as a whole.”

committed to and adversely impacting our dedicated resources.

“Transport Authorities also regularly change the rules of the game without any prior notification and without always fully understanding the impact of certain decisions. Transporters and their clients are then forced to find creative solutions to comply with sometimes ‘not-so-practical’ procedures, which have not been thought through, leaving transporters vulnerable to exploitation by overzealous officials. To resolve these issues through arbitration is a long-term solution; however, the transporter and the client are negatively affected until such a time as the matter is resolved at a legislative level. Unfortunately, the transporter bears the full brunt of the financial implications during and after the process. It would be far better for such decisions and for bodies such as the CBRA to be regulated by a body like the Road Freight Association. Alternatively, implementation of a system similar to Gauteng’s e-toll system would force authorities not to implement changes without proper consultation with the industry.”

The importance of fleet maintenance Transport Holdings is committed to zero harm and follows strict safety precautions.

Its fleet of vehicles provide a safe operating environment for employees and general road users. “We keep a very close eye on the maintenance of our fleet and are also aware of our responsibility towards our precious environment. The mining industry in particular has very strict safety regulations, meaning we have to ensure our fleet is of the highest standard and conforms with set requirements. We pride ourselves in a wellmaintained and good looking fleet and we never hesitate to replace ‘run-down’ or unsafe equipment with safe equipment.”

Every vehicle undergoes a pre-inspection before departure on any trip and is booked into a check bay for inspection at least weekly. All vehicles have set service intervals that are strictly adhered to and all vehicles are maintained by the actual manufacturer to draw on their world-class expertise on their own equipment. The company recently replaced old vehicles with 12 brand-new vehicles, which will be dedicated to its mining clients.

“Although there are many rail development projects on the go, we believe there will be a significant delay in providing the required rail capacity in time”

Taking Africa’s challenges in its stride Mining involves moving large volumes of product but due to its volatility (attributed to fluctuating commodity prices), even the smallest production adjustments made by a mine have severe implications for a transporter. “Mines can reduce production targets quickly when necessary, immediately impacting on the work we have OPPOSITE Transport holdings recently took delivery of 12 new vehicles RIGHT A tipper truck at African Copper

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DOMINANT TRANSPORT OPERATOR

Bulk cargo’s big brother

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STABLISHED IN 1982, the Reinhardt Transport Group has become a dominant force in moving bulk commodities for the export market. Graham Gaskell, deputy CEO at Reinhardt Transport, speaks to Simon Foulds about the company.

The ISO 9000 accredited group’s primary focus is transporting bulk produce to Maputo and Durban, and has a healthy repertoire of major mining clients including Phalaborwa Mining Company, African Rainbow

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Minerals, Sasol, Samancor, Xstrata, Lances and ArcelorMittle. “About 75% of our work is in the resources sector, 15% in coal and 5% in agriculture,” says Gaskell.

Fleet size The total fleet size comprises 489 6 x 4 bulk tipper and interlink combination, 259 belonging to Chrome Carriers and the remaining 230 at Reinhardt Transport. Chrome Carriers operates the MAN and Scania brands while DAF and Volvo trucks are used at Reinhardt.

“We have got very good watertight service level agreements with our suppliers – from a technical support point of view. If they exceed their timeframe for service intervals they are expected to supply a back-up vehicle.

The OEM service agreements are analysed on a monthly basis to ensure they stick to their agreements.”

He also mentions training: “A vital and important aspect is driver training. We have a very comprehensive in-house driver training programme.

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TRANSPORT & LOGISTICS

RAILWAY LINE REINSTATEMENT PROJECT

Grootvlei coal upgraded from

road to rail Grootvlei power station’s coal is moving from road to rail thanks to Transnet Freight Rail’s strategy to reduce coal road haulage.

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HIS RAILWAY LINE will be used to transport coal from coalfields in Mpumalanga and the Free State to Eskom’s Grootvlei power station near Balfour in Mpumalanga.

The base materials order comprises about 120 000 t of G5 base material and 55 000 m³ of heavy line ballast, as well as approximately 1 500 m³ of ready-mix concrete. These products are being supplied out of AfriSam’s Rooikraal and Sub Nigel operations, located on the East Rand. The order includes material for the upgrading of two concrete bridges and a number of culverts.

AfriSam’s George Hesse, key account consultant responsible for Transnet, says all the

coal required by the power station is being transported by road haulage at present. The recommissioning of this section of railway line will not only save Eskom expenditure on road haulage costs, but will also reduce the cost of externalities such as damage to public roads, traffic congestion and vehicle exhaust pollution in the area. Most importantly, the loss of lives and injury of people in the communities due to accidents will be mitigated.

“Although the order was placed with us in January 2013, we’ve been part of the Transnet Freight Rail team for this project since 2012,” Hesse says. “We’ve since become embedded in this project team, attending weekly planning and progress meetings, 2

and this close cooperation has generated a supply partnership that has resulted in the order being executed within the required time frames.”

Activities on the Balfour to Grootvlei railway line reduced significantly when Eskom mothballed the Grootvlei power station in 1990, but when South Africa experienced a power crisis in the late 2000s, the power station was returned to service.

“Unfortunately, in the years following the 1990 mothballing of the power station, the railway link line used to bring in coal fell into disuse and later most of the 22 km line was actually stolen, including the line, sleepers and switchgear,” Hesse explains. “The reinstatement project includes the line being upgraded to higher axle loading specification in line with the Transnet Freight Rail network standards, which will eventually allow heavier trains to supply the required coal.”

AfriSam is also supplying other Transnet Freight Rail upgrade undertakings, including sections of the main Johannesburg to KwaZulu-Natal line from Heidelberg to Durban, sections from Ladysmith to Newcastle and portions of the Mpumalanga to Richards Bay coal line.

1 The supplied material will be used for the upgrading of two concrete bridges and a number of culverts 2 AfriSam is one of the leading suppliers of ballast to the South African railway sector 3 AfriSam is supplying 1 500 m³ of ready-mix concrete for Transnet’s Balfour to Grootvlei railway link project 1

3

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TRANSPORT HOLDINGS

TRANSPORT & LOGISTICS

T

O DATE, TWO tamper rebuilds have been completed, with the third now under way. A further two new tampers will also be constructed by Lennings and all units will feature the industry’s latest instrumentation and control systems.

One of Southern Africa’s leading rail track construction and maintenance contractors, Lennings forms part of the multinational Aveng group of construction, infrastructure and engineering companies.

Its equipment fleet requirements, which are largely manufactured at its Boksburg workshops, include ballast tampers, regulators, screeners and undercutters, track renewal and rail handling trains, rail grinders and vehicles for ultrasonic rail flaw detection and track geometry measurement.

Within this machine mix, tampers have a vital role to play in new rail layouts, as well as maintenance, where over time the geometry and resilience of the track provided by the ballast structure needs to be corrected.

Tampers achieve this by vibrating and compacting in-situ ballast, thereby ensuring optimum track support. In the process, hydraulic mechanisms lift and reposition concrete sleepers onto the freshly packed track

RELIABLE RAILWAYS

requirement is for rail work, with only 10% of the overall utilisation needed for travelling between sites. “Our research before ordering the C13s shows that this engine handles the required loads very well, with smooth power delivery at stable operating temperatures,” Vermaak continues. “In fact, only about 75% of the total net output will ever be required, which should help to extend engine life.”

Edwin Redelinghuys, responsible for locomotive engine sales at Barloworld Power, adds: “The only modifications required were the addition of compression and transmission coolers to suit the application and the repositioning of the radiator within the engine compartment design.”

Of the eight Cat C13s ordered, one will be kept in reserve as a standby unit, with overall parts support and service provided by Barloworld Power, the Cat and Perkins dealer for Southern Africa.

As they come off the production line, these tampers will join existing units in the Lennings fleet, operating across South Africa as well as regionally for public and private sector clients in countries like Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique.

This footprint is expanding into other parts of Africa and the Middle East, as well as Australia and South East Asia, the latter regions in conjunction with sister company, McConnell Dowell Constructors.

Recent examples include Lennings’ construction of a 300 km rail line for a mine development in north Western Australia, a project which commenced in January 2012 for scheduled completion in August 2013.

Powering Lennings’ tamper fleet

Keeping pace with project demands, Aveng Manufacturing Lennings Rail Services (Lennings) has ordered eight Cat C13 engines from Barloworld Power for fitment in new and refurbished rail ballast tampers. ballast. (Laser guided systems are employed to ensure correct rail alignment.)

“On the rebuilt tamper units, we are changing out the old tried and tested Cat 3306 engine model with the new, more powerful and fuel efficient Cat C13 power plant,” explains Bart Vermaak, executive manager: technical training and special projects at Aveng Manufacturing Lennings Rail Services. “Historically, our Cat 3306 units have performed exceptionally well with minimal repairs and overhauls required over their lifespan, so we have high expectations for the C13.”

Compared to the Cat 3306’s rated net output of 186 kW (250 hp), the C13 has a net power of 328 kW (440 hp). During tamper operations, the main engine

TOP Commissioning in progress on one of Lennings’ refurbished tamper units. This is a single sleeper indexing machine LEFT (From left) Edwin Redelinghuys, locomotive engine sales at Barloworld Power, and from Lennings Rail Services, Bark Vermaak, executive manager, technical training and special projects; Wayne Bouch; Alex McCleeve; Stephan Matsoban; Anthony Burns and Mike Munchin.

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BollorĂŠ Africa Logistics, a worldwide network dedicated to Africa 1st: We are the 1st integrated logistics network in Africa 28: The number of port & rail concessions

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250: Million Euros investments per year

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PA NE L D I S CUS S I ON |

IT INNOVATIONS IN MINING SABLE DATA WORKS PANEL EXPERT Marcia van Aswegen – MD

I

dentify the main IT trends in the mining sector MVA These are:

• data warehousing • auditable, quality management of data life cycles • overall automation and integration of data from disparate sources such as laboratories • data security • data quality • software as a service.

What IT solutions does SABLE Data Works offer to meet these trends?

• Data warehousing – The fifth and sixth generations of the SABLE product suite have been built on a rugged client server architecture that manages and supports one customisable data standard across multiple servers.

Each server holds the data

for a particular business unit but the data structures and relationships, data conventions, dictionaries and data processes remain the same across the separate databases.

Auditable, quality management of data life cycles – SABLE provides functionality around its databases to track the movement of data sets and entities. Data ownership is promoted through security.

Changes to data can be tracked to particular logins, user roles and timed sessions. If part of the data’s life cycle is outside of the database, its integration back to its position is tracked and managed auditably.

Overall automation and integration of data from disparate sources such as laboratories – SABLE has tackled the issue of receiving analytical data from multiple laboratories in variable formats by supplying a managed process that conforms the data before subjecting it to quality control functions. Once the quality control has been passed, the data can be loaded to the data warehouse through a firewall.

Data security – In order to prevent the risk of intellectual

property residing in user applications such spreadsheets and user data stores, remote data capture functionality is provided at the point of data collection. This data is then migrated straight to the mother database using a secure data format. This means that data cannot change during transportation.

The integration of this data within the governed data warehouse environment is strictly managed.

Data quality – I believe that it is better to have no data than bad data! SABLE’s Data standard provides measurable quality assurance for the data in our databases. We deal with descriptions that are qualitative in nature.

They must be quantified in order to be captured into a database. SABLE provides the tools to support and manage this transformation. User licensing for data capture has been provided at no additional cost to our clients since 1996.

I remember a year when Anglo American Platinum’s exploration team logged 250 km of drill core into SABLE in one year.

Software as a service – We have identified the need to supply the product as a bundled service. Each package delivers a well-defined set of functionality and everything required to make it work for the client or site. Packs are independent of each other and can be added or dropped easily.

What IT infrastructure requirements need to be in place to ensure they are used and function optimally? We require stable Microsoft Windows SABLE software helps mines unveil their true potential

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PCs for field data capture into a locally hosted database on the PC. Rugged PCs are recommended for harsh environments, local or wide area networks for database connectivity and database servers hosting Microsoft SQL Server to host the data warehouse.

Remote sites can make use of external cloud hosted services (which require internet access) or internal hosted servers (which can be accessed via VPN).

Data captured offline can be emailed or uploaded for incorporation into the mother database by the administrator.

What is the average time frame for return on investment for your IT packages/solutions?

SABLE is easily motivated within a drilling and sampling programme because the cost of the product and service is a small fraction of the cost of obtaining the data. Return on investment is obtained within three months. You do, however, need a six-month programme to justify new software implementation.

If you already have an established implementation, you can get up and running within one month.

What training is required to operate your systems and how user-friendly are they? We provide hands-on training using the client’s customised data standard and perform data management and administration of databases using SABLE tools.

Training courses support our packaged functionalities to ensure quality assurance and quality control of data.

We make sure that the users know why they are doing what they are doing and how to do it. Clients’ data managers are able to train the data loggers themselves using our training material, if required.

PA NE L D I S CUS S I ON |

IT INNOVATIONS IN MINING MINERP PANEL EXPERT Empie Strydom – Vice president, marketing

I

dentify the main IT trends in the mining sector. ES The two

major trends that we have identified over the past year are the growth in information visualisation and the use of big data in business analysis.

What IT solutions does MineRP offer to meet these trends? MineRP offers mining companies an information integration platform that allows them to spatially index all mining technical information in a single, open geospatial consortium (OGC) compliant spatial database. This in turn provides mines with the ability to visualise, animate and analyse all their integrated

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mining technical data over the Internet using MineRP systems such as SpatialAnalyzer and SpatialDash.

Furthermore, MineRP has recently applied for patents addressing new ways of managing mineral resources for mining companies. This entails utilising our integrated spatial information platform, and exploiting the power of in-memory database processing of the large data volumes generated in order to allow mining companies on-demand access to accurate, transparent and auditable resource and reserve statements any time of the year.

What IT infrastructure requirements need to be in place to ensure they are used and function optimally? For the MineRP integration platform for mining technical solutions, no more than standard Microsoft SQL server is required. In order to exploit big data generated by mining technical systems, companies will need access to

in-memory database platforms such as SAP’s HANA.

What are the biggest challenges facing the IT industry and how are you overcoming these?

The biggest challenge remains in the area of information integration. MineRP addresses this issue through post-create standardisation of mining data.

This means we allow mining companies to continue utilising the planning, geology, survey, sampling and other MTS systems they prefer without forcing them to standardise on our solutions in each of these disciplines. Rather, we build the integration bridges between the providers of the different mining technical systems that allow mining companies to use and exploit standardised, spatially aware mining data as if it were created in one system.

What is the average time frame for return on investment for your IT packages/solutions?

Since the price levels for

entry compared to the yields to be unlocked via small improvements in planning or operational efficiencies are very small, ROI can be fully achieved within mere months.

What training is required to operate your systems and how user-friendly are they? This differs vastly between the various products provided by MineRP. As far as our web-based spatial integration and analysis software (SpatialAnalyzer and SpatialDash) are concerned, these can be utilised after a day’s worth of training. The systems used to create plans, models and mining scenarios are more complicated and require both professional training as well as system training lasting up to five working days.

Give an example or case study of a MineRP application Many large international mining companies have successfully implemented MineRP’s enterprise integration platform. In our biggest implementation at a single client, more than 2 500 users at the single client log in and use our software on any given day.

PA NE L D I S CUS S I ON |

IT INNOVATIONS IN MINING

SAGE ERP AFRICA PANEL EXPERT Keith Fenner – Senior vice president sales – Africa and the Middle East

I

dentify the main IT trends in the mining sector. KF There are a

number of trends affecting the industry at present, the main issue is cost of ownership as mines battle to control operational costs with declining revenue streams and an uncertain outlook.

A trend we see is referred to

by Sage as the Tier 2 strategy, where mines have invested in

Tier 1 ERP suites at a group level and look to invest in second tier solutions like Sage ERP X3 in emerging markets where costs need to be kept to a minimum. This leads to the usability of the software as its crucial end users can adopt and deploy quickly. Another trend is mobility where mines look to do approvals and get business intelligence data on mobile devices real time.

What IT solutions does SAGE offer to meet these trends? Sage ERP X3

has real time connectors at process level to Tier 1 ERP suites to allow seamless data flows between disparate applications. Sage ERP X3 has visual processes to speed up learning and reduce deployment costs as well as delivering mobile applications that work in offline mode to cope with African connectivity challenges.

What IT infrastructure requirements need to be in place to ensure they are used and function

optimally? A mid-range ERP requires limited hardware capability, and with Sage ERP X3, all solutions can operate from the cloud as needed. Sage ERP X3 also has the ability to operate in disconnected sites using our built-in Bus technology to synchronise data processes at object level.

What is the average time frame for return on investment for your IT packages/solutions?

If we look at the return on investment of Sage ERP X3 with Sage Inventory Advisor, the return can be extremely quick as we optimise stock levels at the same time as increasing operational efficiency, meaning real returns in three months are a reality.

What training is required to operate your systems and how user-friendly are they? Training at process level and navigate visually – simple and easy to use.

List an example or case study of a Sage application. Diversified mining company Village Main Reef is a Sage ERP client.

TOP & LEFT Sage ERP software caters to small and large operators

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P ANEL DIS C USSI O N |

I

dentify the main IT trends in the mining sector CP Micromine

has currently identified that mining/exploration companies in the African region are looking for a single-vendor solution that caters to all their software needs – from exploration right through the mining value chain to production and mine optimisation. The quote “one throat to choke” has been used by a couple of our clients. With our range of software solutions, we are able to consolidate the client’s multiple software providers and solutions into one vendor solution. This makes annual licence fees a lot easier to manage as it is just one vendor to pay. By doing this, there is also a massive saving on annual licence fee costs.

Micromine is the only provider of solutions that are relevant to every stage of the mining process. This means that our clients can source all of their software and consulting needs through one local vendor.

With software being a lifeof-mine commitment, we find our clients wanting to engage with us on more of a corporate partnership programme level and taking advantage of preferential pricing and service levels. These initiatives pull us closer to the clients and, as a result, we understand their needs and business a lot better.

Our solutions then become business-critical to the clients and the functionality of our software is maximised because of our constant engaging with the client.

What are the biggest challenges facing the IT industry and how are you overcoming these? Skill sets are a big challenge for software solutions. Micromine installs its software at universities across the continent in an effort to upskill students and expose them to our cuttingedge technology. This initiative assists the students when

IT INNOVATIONS IN MINING

MICROMINE PANEL EXPERT Craig Peek – Customer services manager for Africa

they are looking for a job upon leaving university and gives them a better chance of getting the job because they have been exposed to a software solution and need minimal training.

What is the average time frame for return on investment for your IT packages/solutions? Our mine control and management reporting solution Pitram achieves business sustainability and improvement goals by driving superior outcomes in key mine management areas, that is: reporting, control, planning and optimisation. The average return on investment is 12 months and the saving will, by that time, have paid for the software.

What training is required to operate your systems and how user-friendly are they? Micromine training courses ensure you get the most from your software investment to enable increased productivity and improved efficiencies.

Micromine offers multi-tiered training from introductory to advanced, as well as refresher

and masters courses, which can be tailored to your specific requirements. Courses include: • Core & exploration – the course is designed to show the participant how to start using Micromine and introduce certain features • Plotting – introduces the participants to the process of creating a plot file • Wireframing – introduces the participants to the process of creating a wireframe solid, which can be used to model 3D shapes such as geological units or structures • Micromine intermediate training • Exploration – helps in preparation of drilling summaries • Wireframing – introduces the participants to the process of performing quality control on strings that are being used to wireframe, validation of wireframes and correction on wireframes that won’t build.

• Micromine advanced training – resources estimation • Statistical essentials – introduces the basic statistical

concepts needed to describe a dataset • Block modelling – outlines the major steps required to model, estimate, classify and report the grade and tonnages of a mineral resource • Geostatistics – introduces spatial correlation, which is an important assumption of most grade estimation methods.

List an example or case study of a Micromine application Last year, specialist nickel explorer African Nickel undertook a number of high-profile exploration and feasibility studies using software developed by Micromine.

African Nickel has been making use of Micromine – a modular solution that enables the user to capture, manage and interpret critical mining and exploration data – since 2010. African Nickel’s technical director, Richard Hornsey, notes that nickel exploration is highly challenging from a technical perspective. “The user-friendliness of Micromine enables users to rapidly gain an in-depth, three-dimensional understanding of a project even with a relatively small amount of spatial data, as all information can be visualised in true space.”

Micromine is the only provider of solutions that are relevant to every stage of the mining process

IN SID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 61

PYROMETALLURGY

POOLED KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE

Catering locally,

and

abroad

The SNC-Lavalin pyrometallurgy team in Johannesburg is currently involved in several niche projects for both local and international clients for whom it is custom designing equipment and systems for specific customer applications.

S

NC-LAVALIN is recognised for providing sound engineering and project delivery solutions to clients in many industries,” says Ted Fulton, a pyrometallurgy specialist with SNC-Lavalin’s Johannesburg office.

“Based on our customers’ preferences, our team can specify, select and purchase the optimum equipment, or prepare and offer a complete technology supply package or packaged plant. In addition, the level of technical support our pyrometallurgical experts are able to provide on our projects significantly enhances the quality of the process and technology designs delivered to customers.”

Currently, the company is poised to complete a project for a ferrochrome producer in Turkey to increase the capacity of its existing low carbon ferrochrome plant from 12 000 to 32 000 tpa. Optimising the customer’s

62 INS I DE MI NI NG 1 0 | 2 0 1 3

existing smelter has entailed the conversion of an existing closed 15 MVA calcium carbide furnace to a semi-closed furnace to smelt ferrosilicon chrome and the supply of a new 8 MW DC furnace to smelt low carbon ferrochrome via silicothermic reduction.

Other current projects include the design and supply of new copper roofing for a pig iron and titanium dioxide slag plant in Norway and a pre-feasibility study for a 5 000 tpa magnesium plant to be constructed in the Western Cape.

“The pooled knowledge and experience of our pyrometallurgy team has put us on the map. We have the process expertise and equipment capabilities to deliver cutting edge solutions,” Fulton adds. “We’re now accelerating our search for new projects, while at the same time providing support to the greater SNC-Lavalin organisation on other pyrometallurgical projects.”

SNC-Lavalin’s South African pyrometallurgy team comprises about 18 specialists, engineers and designers with full 3D-design capability specialising in custom-designed pyrometallurgical plants and equipment.

In-house competencies include CFD (computational fluid dynamic) to solve flow and heat transfer problems and FEA (finite element analysis) to determine the structural integrity of equipment and evaluate thermal performance. Both these modelling systems are used for equipment design and also offered as a service to clients on other engineering applications.

Fulton says that a big investment is currently under way to improve the technology on offer even further, ensuring best available technology and best environmental practice, to meet future requirements of the global industry.

The pyrometallurgical technology team in South Africa specialises in a wide range of services to the smelting industry, including AC and DC furnace components, complete AC and DC furnaces, complete smelter plants, furnace upgrades and retrofits, and other services forming part of feasibility studies, engineering services and lump sum turnkey contracts. The team has experience and know-how across a broad spectrum of industries and commodities. SNC-Lavalin’s AC furnace technology comprises innovative equipment such as electrode columns for medium and large furnaces using Söderberg, pre-baked or composite electrodes, electrical power systems for single and multiple transformer configurations, roof designs for closed and semi-closed furnaces and long life refractory lining designs, cooling and furnace control systems.

“Our DC arc furnace technology has significant economic and technical benefits over conventional pyrometallurgical processes when smelting fine materials,” he says. “This also applies to metallurgical systems, where maintaining control of the furnace can be difficult owing to factors such as the electrical resistivity properties of the slag. Typical applications include smelting of chromite, nickel-laterite ores, ilmenite and the recovery of metals from steel-plant and stainless steel plant dusts and non-ferrous slag.”

Furnace containment technology The copper cooling technology available to SNC-Lavalin is based on the composite furnace module (CFM) technology, which was developed through close cooperation between the University of Melbourne and industry participant Western Mining Company (now owned by BHP Billiton),

PYROMETALLURGY

OPPOSITE A semi-closed ferrosilicon chrome AC furnace recently installed in Turkey by SNC-Lavalin RIGHT A low carbon DC furnace recently installed in Turkey by SNC-Lavalin

in the late 1990s. It is a patented concept, which has been thoroughly tested in industrial furnaces.

“The CFM cooling system is purposely designed to provide a uniform hot-face temperature that is low enough to promote the formation of a protective accretion layer for furnace containment,” Fulton explains. “A minimal amount of copper is used to ensure that the installation of the modules will not significantly alter the process heat balance during normal operation. Each individual module consists of a water-cooled copper backing plate from which copper rods extend towards the hot face of the refractory lining.

Castable refractory materials fill the voids between the rods, thereby thermally and chemically protecting the copper. Comprehensive monitoring of the modules provides early warning of any unsafe conditions.”

About SNC-Lavalin SNC-Lavalin is one of the leading engineering and construction groups in the world and a major player in the ownership of infrastructure and in the provision of operations and maintenance services. Founded in 1911, SNCLavalin has offices across Canada and in over 40 other countries around the world and is currently working in some 100 countries. www.snclavalin.com.

IN SID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 63

PYROMETALLURGY

COGENERATION

The future

unfolds The pyrometallurgical industry is undergoing a major transformation as the need to reduce carbon footprints and energy consumption while improving energy efficiency is no longer an option but a necessity, writes Laura Cornish.

T

HE NEED FOR technologies aimed at meeting the evolving needs of this industry has become critical,â&#x20AC;? says Vernon Harding, director at Environmental & Process Solutions  (EPS).

EPS was established in 2005 as a pyrometallurgical engineering company specialising in and promoting recovery, recycling and reuse of waste products. The company has enhanced its environmental capabilities further since 2009, following more

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Realising possibilities...

stringent environmental regulations and the acknowledgement of South Africa’s energy constrained status.

“EPS has expanded its service offering since inception, but our pyrometallurgy roots remain a core business focus for us. To date, we have worked with all the major mining and metals groups including BHP Billiton, SA Calcium Carbide, Anglo American and Xstrata, as well as the mid-tier mining and ferroalloys producers such as International Ferro Metals (IFM).”

EPS is an engineering company providing innovative solutions to reduce environmental footprints, which includes cash generating solutions for waste mine dumps, within the ISO 14001 footprint, i.e. carbon reduction, energy efficiency and reduced power consumption. “This is the cornerstone of EPS’s philosophy.” The company has experience in chrome, manganese, PGMs, ilmenite, vanadium and rare earths, and ultimately aims to offer lower power consumption per megawatt of metal produced.

EPS is the largest implementer of industrial cogeneration plants in South Africa and has successfully completed a number of projects converting ‘waste’ gas or heat into energy. The company offers a full turnkey plant solution or build, own, operate (BOO) cogeneration facilities and can build containerised plants from as small as 250 kW up to 25 MW. Some of its most recent work to date includes a 17 MW

...from mine to market.

Resource Evaluation

Mineral Processing

Mine Planning

Tailings & Waste Management

Smelting & Refining

Materials Handling

Environment & Approvals

Transport to Market

Non-Process Infrastructure

WorleyParsons adds value through our full scope of services from pit to port including studies, mine planning, impact assessments, permitting and approvals, project management, construction management and global procurement.

40+

countries

160+

LEFT EPS has designed, built and commissioned a 17 MW cogeneration opener plant for International Ferro Metals, which is successfully operating www.worleyparsons.com

I N S I D E M I N I N G 1 0 | 2 0 13 65

Mining & Mine Development

offices

40,000+

people

PYROMETALLURGY

cogeneration power plant for IFM as well as an 8 MW plant for SA Calcium Carbide.

“The IFM integrated clean energy project is a first of its kind in South Africa and signals the start of large-scale cogeneration power plants in the country.” This cogeneration project entails the reticulation, cleaning and preparation of 16 000 Nm³/h furnace export gas to a cogeneration facility. Power is generated from the gas with internal combustion engines fitted with a generator enclosed in a building at a separate greenfield facility on the IFM site. The plant hosts 10 internal combustion machines. Each engine is capable of producing approximately 1.7 MW of electricity with a 37% electrical efficiency.

In early September, EPS commenced with a 5 MW cogeneration project for Anglo American Platinum’s ACP plant at the Waterval smelter, which will also convert waste heat into energy. “Like the IFM project, this will be a first-of-its-kind plant, thanks to our Thermal Harvesting technology concept that has numerous patents.”

The Thermal Harvesting process involves

“harvesting thermal energy and transferring it to an organic rankine or similar cycle; the thermal energy can be efficiently converted into electricity. This is attractive because we can generate power from waste streams for 150°C waste stacks.”

On the back of its successes in South Africa, EPS is looking to take its technology solutions to Africa. “Our vision is to distribute clean, energy efficient power generation plants for mining and minerals companies in Africa where electricity is difficult to come by.

“What we are offering primarily is a more operationally cost-effective alternative to diesel generators. We have aligned ourselves with metallurgical engineers Mineral Resource Development and together can offer clients both process plants and the downstream furnaces and smelters necessary to produce power.”

The company is currently busy with four projects in Africa – all converting waste to energy. This includes a methane mine venting project, an oil and discard gas flaring project and a municipal waste project.

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EPS MEETING THE

FUTURE'S

GREEN COGENERATION

Mamatwan Sinter Plant Off-strand Cooler Environmental Control Design & CFD Analysis

BHP Billiton CFD Design & 3D Layout for Emission Reduction Study – South Plant

Mamatwan Sinter Plant Off-strand Cooler Environmental Control Design & CFD Analysis

BHP Billiton CFD Design & 3D Layout for Emission Reduction Study – South Plant

NEEDS

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K]h\ <igejUfbU mci `` [Yh U X]UacbX hcc` h\Uh Wihg YZĂ&#x201A;W]Ybh`m UbX []jYg mci perfect control. A tool developed for its special mission by the experts at Husqvarna, for experts like you. Together, we master the elements.

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www.husqvarnacp.co.za Share Call: 08600 48759. Tel: 033 846 9700. info@husqvarna.co.za Husqvarna is a registered trademark. Copyright Š 2013 HUSQVARNA. All rights reserved.

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Rock, concrete, steel and brick are some of the most challenging materials known to man. To cut through them with immense precision, you need something even harder - a diamond tool from the world's leading producer.

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Master of the elements.

P E RT

PYROMETALLURGY

NEW FERROALLOY TECHNOLOGY

Cleaner off-gases in

closed smelting

A new, patented technology for the high temperature cleaning of furnace off-gas generated in a closed ferroalloy smelting process will enable smelter operators to use the cleaned gas more easily in a number of cogeneration plant options.

D

EVELOPED BY TENOVA Pyromet (part of Tenova Mining & Minerals), the new method and process to cool and clean the (mainly) carbon monoxide rich furnace off-gas has been developed through a combination and modification of current technologies, successfully addressing the shortcomings of the traditional industry method of wet scrubbing systems. These include reducing the solid content in the cleaned process off-gas to below 5 mg/Nm3, reducing moisture in the cleaned process gas by reducing or eliminating the use of water, eliminating condensation of tars on colder surfaces for certain process off-gases by operating above the tar dew point of the process gas, and eliminating the wet

68 INS I DE MI NI NG 1 0 | 2 0 1 3

scrubber liquor water treatment system, which can be problematic when a process off-gas with tars present is to be treated.

The principle of the new development is to clean the process gas as hot as possible using filtration separation technology.

Solids are separated and collected from the process gas by passing it through high temperature filtration elements, which are periodically cleaned using an inert gas. The resultant solid gas content of the cleaned gas is below 5 mg/Nm3, as opposed to the 10 to 50 mg/Nm3 of wet scrubbing systems, and is suitable for direct use in any power generation or heating system.

If high volatile reductants are used, the hot gas with tar in vapour form passes through the filtering section for

ABOVE Tenova Pyromet has developed a new, patented technology for the high temperature cleaning of furnace off-gas generated in a closed ferroalloy smelting process OPPOSITE CAD rendering of new technology

cleaning before entering a suitable tar removal system, prior to being used in a power generation system or heating system. The collected tars from the tar removal systems can be used as a fuel or safely disposed of.

The process is therefore applied beneficially as an alternative to conventional wet gas cleaning system in a number of applications. These include applications where there are medium off-gas volumes at high gas temperatures, off-gas containing unwanted components, such as tars, and where specific clean gas properties are required, such as low moisture content, low solid content and a gas temperature above the dew point for further processing/cleaning.

“This new technology is an important development for ferroalloy producers, as the industry is facing increasing challenges in terms of harder to access and lower grade carbon reductants, compounded by escalating power costs, as well as increasing

PYROMETALLURGY

legislative and social pressure to minimise impact on the environment,” says Chris Oertel, MD of Tenova Pyromet.

“The increasing cost and diminishing supply of metallurgical grade coke as the main source of carbon for reduction reactions in closed ferroalloy smelting have

led producers to use alternative sources of carbon, such as coal with a high volatile matter. When a high percentage of this lower grade coal is used, tar vapours can be present in the furnace off-gas, which, in wet gas cleaning, will condense when the gas is in contact with colder surfaces

or water, creating operating, maintenance and water treatment problems.

“In addition, the rise in electricity prices has made it necessary to consider utilising all the gases as a source of fuel for producing electrical energy in a cogeneration installation.”

IN SID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 69

When I say I’ll deliver...

I deliver!

Peter Yaman

Produced by Coralynne & Associates Tel: (011) 422-1949

General Manager - Projects/Heavy Lift Division

Together, the Johnson team delivers a SMART lift Safety | Maintenance | Availability | Reliability | Total Cost Effectiveness Tel: +27 (011) 455 9222 or 0860 CRANES | Fax: +27 (011) 455 9230

TECHNOLOGY

TECH- SAVVY

T

HE WEIR MINERALS Africa’s product portfolio has grown substantially over the past few years and, after being viewed solely as a slurry pump provider, the company’s reputation is evolving. While its slurry pump range may always be its biggest revenue generator, it is committed to marketing and developing its entire product range equally, including research and development expenditure.

“Our annual R&D investment is significant and a business avenue we focus on extensively,” says process manager JD Singleton. All of Weir Mineral Africa’s service centres are also equipped to undertake all equipment upgrades and new products for clients.

“Weir acknowledges the need for equipment to run more efficiently, for longer, with less costs and all our developments are geared to achieve that.

We believe in enhancing, improving and upgrading our products on a continual basis, with the intention of reducing total cost of ownership for the client. This means implementing technologies to reduce energy consumption, increase efficiencies, reduce maintenance requirements and use superior materials to enhance performance and extend wear life. up pgrades d We are comfortably delivering upgrades t three and enhancements every two to years,” Singleton continues. mp p range, range ge, The Warman WBH slurry pump the Warman MC range for milll dismaan charge circuits and the Warman th h SLR pump are all designed with these objectives at the fore-front of their performance.

The company will also soon launch the Warman WBV ultra-heavy-duty range of vertical cantilevered slurry pumpss ed d to o into the local market, designed ncce with provide substantial performance ll make m low power consumption. This will ip it one of the lowest total ownership cost pumps in its class. mHe also speaks highly of the comng pany’s Warman DWU dewatering RIGHT TOP The new Warman DWU U dewatering pump range nt RIGHT The new Enduron equipment ranges are now available

70 INS I DE MI NI NG 1 0 | 2 0 1 3

Paying less but getting more Weir Minerals Africa’s competitive edge can be attributed to its unparalleled commitment to technology innovation through ongoing research and development across its entire product range, writes Laura Cornish.

range, a relatively new pump developed to improve the old Envirotech C5 pump range that has been around for many years. “The product is performing extremely well for the company and as a result we have committed to continue improving the design and future developments to produce higher heads are ongoing.”

Since bringing the Linatex brand on board a few years back, Singleton says the products are better than ever. “We have implemented a leaner design on the Linatex hoses and can also offer the market fit-for-purpose dual purpose hoses best suited to each plant application.” The same can be said for the Linatex rubber linings, which are adapted to suit individual applications.

“We have improved the design of our mill liners, which incorporates superior rubber composites that outlast steel liners substantially in certain applications,” he outlines.

All new screen developments will be branded Enduron to tie up with the introduction of the new Enduron crushing range, which are proven performers in heavy-duty crushing applications. Enduron crushers are characterised by an ingenious inge design easily combining lightweight, lightw lightwe compact and robust frames to o achieve durability, ost of ownership and lower total co cost a b better overall perffo formance than other eex existing models.

The Enduron range plaac emphasis on enplaces haan hancing mining produ uc ductivity and safety, d is designed to maxand cussto imise customers’ operational efficiencies. efficie Screeen and crushers are effi ciencies. Screens typicaally the workhorses workkh typically of an ore processin ng operation and Weir Minerals’ cessing dessign and ap design application expertise, combined with its product support resources, will ensure that the new products provide optimum performance as they co with the demands of today’s cope m mining industry. “The Enduron SP s series cone crushers range from 1 100 hp to 400 hp and we’re already de designing the next generation of

TECHNOLOGY

larger crushers for future applications.”

Singleton says the first trial site has already been secured to test the product.

“Our in-house expertise has contributed to superior designs of larger screens, which are delivering good test results through the incorporation of new g-force geared exciters, enabling screens to cope with the high-capacity demands of modern plants.

“This new range could not have been better timed. SAG mills are losing favour due to their high energy consumption. The combination of our Enduron range and high-pressure grinding rolls provides the industry with an entirely new cost-effective, highly productive comminution circuit.

“Finally, there is our Isogate slurry valve, which is already well recognised in the industry. A new and improved version is on the cards, but that is all I will say at this stage.”

Singleton says the bottom line is simple.

“Clients want reduced capital costs and greater yield. This is our primary focus and we are

“Weir acknowledges the need for equipment to run more efficiently, for longer, with less costs” delivering on it. Ensuring our products are successful in the market requires investing a lot of resources and time in demonstrating our proven results to customers. This is of equal importance to the products.”

LEFT TOP The Warman WBH slurry pump undergoing testing at the Alrode manufacturing center.jpg LEFT The Warman DWU 150 on display at the Weir Minerals facility in Alrode

IN SID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 71

TECHNOLOGY

SPILLAGE S M AR TS

A handle once

philosophy

Spillages are recognised as a costly and time wasting problem area in the mining sector if not managed properly. Vacuum systems are undoubtedly the solution to this problem, especially those which offer the latest technologies and innovations, writes Laura Cornish.

H

ENCON VACUUM Technologies (Hencon) designs, manufactures and supports heavy duty industrial vacuum systems to the mining industry, used for the cleaning of spillage material. “This is something that most, if not all, mines and processing plants constantly battle with, especially- around and under conveyors and areas that are difficult to reach with conventional equipment and where the only alternative is manual labour with shovels and often buckets,” says general manager David de Oliveira.

Vacuuming the material makes it possible to place it back onto the conveyors, fitting the process into a single step, which fits in

ABOVE Vacuuming material makes it possible to place it back onto the conveyors, fitting the process into a single step LEFT The Hencon vacuum machine saves time and money

72 INS I DE MI NI NG 1 0 | 2 0 1 3

TECHNOLOGY

with Henconâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;handle onceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; philosophy. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This reduces the overall cost of dealing with spillages and improves the safety and speed of cleaning operations,â&#x20AC;? he continues.

While vacuum technology itself is not new, De Oliveira says Hencon constantly looks at ways to improve its machines. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Technology touches all areas of our business, including engineering, administration, sales and marketing, procurement and production, and we are constantly evaluating new technology to see how it could help us do our work better and ultimately allow us to give our customers an improved product and experience.â&#x20AC;? More recently, the company has made significant steps forward in various areas of its vacuum designs â&#x20AC;&#x201C; specifically power saving and noise level reduction. â&#x20AC;&#x153;When South Africa started experiencing load shedding and mines were asked to reduce power consumption it became clear that this was something we would have to address. Although it is possible to get savings from using high efficiency electric motors, due to the specific nature of our machines and how they work, energy savings using these items would be minimal, if any.

The benefits for gold and diamonds Besides cleaning spillages, Hencon vacuums have shown to be useful in recovering high value materials in the gold and diamond mining sectors. Gold mining specifically can benefit from using vacuums to recover material that is left behind by conventional material handling equipment. Clients can expect high grades even though the volumes are low. These systems are designed with the mining industry and environment in mind, and besides being robust and reliable, they are also easy to use and operate.

So we focused on a different operating area.

In the past, our machines would run for a specific amount of time and then, to be able to discharge the material that had been collected during that time, the unit would automatically switch off and then restart again 30 seconds later. These restarts used up the most amount of energy in the overall use of the machines. To address this operational challenge, we redesigned our vacuums so that they are able to discharge without the need to stop the main motor.â&#x20AC;?

In terms of noise level reductions, Hencon has undergone a concerted process of machine design and testing, going through about four or five versions until a satisfactory result was achieved. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Our electric machines

are now capable of noise levels that are 85 decibels or less, a very important consideration for the mines. Along with the noise level improvements, we have also improved the overall finishing of the units by using higher quality components for door handles, hinges and latches, which allow for easier operation and maintenance.â&#x20AC;?

At the beginning of 2012, Hencon switched to SolidWorks 3D software, which has brought with it many benefits including being able to visually see what a part or machine will look like long before it is built. This has made it easier to design new machines and has allowed Hencon to build up a database of components, which reduces the time needed to engineer a unit, De Oliveira adds.

IN SID E M IN IN G 1 0 | 2013 73

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TECHNOLOGY

ONL I NE A N A LY S E R S

A major coal industry impact

C

ONVEYOR BELT sampling and analysis of coal is rarely an effective means of process control as laboratory results tend to become historical records of what has already passed through the plant and may be totally unrelated to what is about to be processed.

Bulk material monitor and control company Scantechâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s real-time, online analysis COALSCAN analysers have been designed to overcome the need to take routine samples for process control. The analysis of the whole stream continuously eliminates sampling errors, which is a major industry challenge.

Consistency in the feed quality to any process improves the performance of that process, and in the coal industry those small improvements can add up to significant dollar benefits very quickly.

The ability to measure the quality of a shipment during loading by analysing the whole flow continuously allows operators to provide not only an average quality that is closer to the specified target but also reduce the variability on a minute by minute basis.

Online analysers have made a major impact in the coal industry in the past 30Â years and Australian company Scantech considers itself a leader in the development of real-time COALSCAN analysers analyser technology applications. Direct have been designed marketing of these analysers is supportto overcome the ed by a South African service centre, need to take which provides installation, commisroutine samples for process control sioning and maintenance assistance.

74 INS I DE MI NI NG 1 0 | 2 0 1 3

Every Minute Matters in Process Control On-belt Real Time Analysers t $PBM JSPO PSF NBOHBOFTF QIPTQIBUF BOE CBVYJUF t #BTF NFUBMT $V ;O 1C /J

t .PJTUVSF t 0WFS JOTUBMMBUJPOT XPSMEXJEF t .PSF UIBO "GSJDBO JOTUBMMBUJPOT t 4FSWJDFE CZ FYQFSJFODFE MPDBM FOHJOFFST t ZFBST PG QSPWFO QFSGPSNBODF

Measure, Control, Improve ... minute by minute.

Australia: +61 7 3710 8406 Africa: +27 832 559 792 sales@scantech.com.au www.scantech.com.au

Excellent Minerals Solutions

Weir Minerals…

Expertise where it counts.

Weir Minerals is the world leader in the design and manufacture of pumps, valves, hydrocyclones and wear resistant linings, including WARMAN® centrifugal slurry pumps, ENVIROTECH® dewatering pumps and LINATEX® rubber products for the global mining and minerals processing industries.

Our reputation is based on engineering excellence applied to innovative, customer focused solutions for processing minerals and aggressive materials.

In line with our customer driven focus, Weir Minerals Africa also offers a pump rental concept as an attractive alternative to an outright purchase.

For more information contact us on +27 (0)11 9292600

www.weirminerals.com

Copyright © 2012, Weir Slurry Group, Inc. All rights reserved. WARMAN is a registered trademark of Weir Minerals Australia Ltd and Weir Group African IP Ltd; MULTIFLO is a registered trademarks of Weir Minerals Australia Ltd; FLOWAY is a registered trademark of Weir Floway Inc.; GEHO is a registered trademark of Weir Minerals Netherlands bv; WEIR is a registered trademark of Weir Engineering Services Ltd.

INDEX

INDEX TO ADVERTISERS Aquadam

33

Johnson Crane Hire

69

Scantech

74

Atlas Copco

14

LexisNexis

11

SDV South Africa

55

2

M3 Construction

71

SRK Consulting

38

Babcock (DAF Trucks

50

MDM Engineering

35

Barloworld Power

51

Micromine

63

Tega Industries

IBC

Concargo Logistics

3

Mineral ReSources Development

IFC

Tenova Bateman Technologies

MineRP Africa

59

Tenova Mining & Minerals ThyssenKrupp

76

Transport Holdings

53

Babcock

Dabmar Manufacturing Company21 Flow Electronics

20

Model Maker Systems

43

Fluor

28

Multotec

41

Golder Associates Africa

9

Paradigm Project Management

15 OBC

26-27 Transnet Freight Rail

44-48

Hencon Vacuum Technologies

73

Reinhardt Transport

50

Husqvarna

67

Royal HaskoningDHV

29

Weir Minerals

75

Sable Data Works

57

WorleyParsonsTWP

65

Impumelelo Technologies

76 INS I DE MI NI NG 1 0 | 2 0 1 3

22-23

Tega offers value added consultancy services and solutions

in Mineral BeneďŹ ciation, Bulk Solids handling, Wear and Abrasion customised to suit speciďŹ c applications.

With focus on core engineering applications in the Mining and Mineral Processing Industry, Steel plants, Power, Port and Cement Industries.

Tega Industries (South Africa) Pty Ltd P.O Box 17260, Benoni West, 1503, South Africa, Phone: (011) 421 - 9916/ 7, 421 - 6714, 421 - 6761, Fax: (011) 845 1472, Email: info@tegaindustries.co.za, www.tegaindustries.com

TM

TOTAL : Solution

Total technology solutions across the mining value chain

■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Engineering and EPCM services for minerals projects Open pit mining and underground solutions and bulk handling Process technologies and modular plant solutions Electric furnaces and associated plant equipment Solid / liquid separation and minerals processing

Tenova Mining & Minerals is a total integrated solutions provider to the global mining, bulk materials handling and minerals beneficiation and processing sectors, offering innovative technological solutions and full process and commodity knowledge across the mining and minerals industry value chain.

58 Emerald Parkway Road, Greenstone Hill Ext. 21 Johannesburg, South Africa +27 11 899 9111 enquiries.TMM@tenova.com www.tenova.com TENOVA is a worldwide supplier of advanced technologies, products and engineering services for the iron & steel and mining industries